<rant>
OK,
It's not often that I get into these sorts of me too's, or platform
put-downs, but as the proud owner of a Power Computing PowerBase
Minitower, and 4 7200's (and many other machines), and having
provided support for many Power Computing computers over the years,
I've got to say something here.
The PowerBase, while based on the 7200 motherboard, made many
significant improvements on the original design, including the
ability to upgrade the machine easily with the addition of a daughter
card processor, not to mention initial processor speeds of up to a
240Mhz 603. PowerBases are easily and cheaply upgraded to G4's, and
run rock solid--try that with a 7200 (without an expensive mother
board swap).
The PowerBase also came with on board IDE, in addition scsi, making
the addition of large/cheap IDE drives easy. Not to mention having an
extra full size bay for, say, a CD-R; try that with a 7200--no can
do. Pop in a good fast scsi drive for the system/apps, and then pop
in a cheap IDE for storage, and you've one heck of a fine computer.
Yes, the fans were noisy, but a pair of Silencers at $12/each easily
took care of that, and you also could easily add a processor fan for
$10 to cool that 240Mhz 603 or G3 or G4 upgrade. The Mac 8500 is just
as noisy, but thrice as hard to get into and work on. Oh, and lets
not forget the built-in vga monitor port to hook up other than Apple
monitors without an adaptor. All-in-all one heck of a fine machine
for those who like to tinker! I'll be using mine in my home office
for years to teach my kids about computers--using and
repairing/upgrading them. Ever see an 8 year-old girl put a CD-Rom
drive in a computer by herself? Not in a 7200 you won't, but in a
PowerBase MiniTower she can.
And for the 7200's, I currently run three of them for servers--email,
listserve, and web. Yes, they're getting old, and yes I'm getting
ready to swap them out, but they've been faultless
workhorses--running for 4-5 year's straight without a squeak. I'd
rather invest my $$ in bandwidth first, then upgrade the machines.
There's many good reasons Apple bought Power Computing. They had
great engineers, who were beating Apple to the market with products
that had more punch and value than their Apple counterparts, and
eating up market share. They had a team of marketing individuals who
put together one of the first kick-$^% online stores and excellent
marketing campaigns. The $100+ million Apple spent to buy them out
was, in addition to eliminating competition that was threatening
their success, to bring that expertise in house to Apple--those
engineers and marketeers that wanted to work with Apple, that is.
Having said all that, I wouldn't hesitate to bring my upgraded
PowerBase into my hosting LAN and use it for a backup server, a web
server, or use it for any purpose whatsoever. In fact there are
hundreds, if not thousands of them out there being used for just
those purposes. One only has to go to http://www.powerwatch.com and
login to their PowerPC users forum to see the vibrancy and life that
still exists in the PowerPC platform.
</rant>
Jim Coefield
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: clones
>From: "Nicholas Froome" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 12:12:54 +0100
>
> >>I'm running it on a beige G3 300MHz desktop. I wouldn't trust a Power
> >>Computing system as a backup server...those are the Packard-Bell of the Mac
> >>clone world.
>
>
>
> >Actually, most of the motherboards are the same as the Apple
>equivalents. They changed other things like floppy drives and
>CD-ROM drives to a cheaper 3rd party though.
> >
> >I had a customer that had a Power Computing PPC. Equivalent to
>the 8500. I opened it up and the motherboard had an Apple part
>number on it. The processor board was made by someone else. The
>floppy drive had died within months of getting the system. The
>CD-ROM drive makes an awful noise, but it still works. The power
>supply is basically an ATX power supply that was modified a little.
>
>I think that is exactly what the first contributor meant when he
>said he wouldn't trust one!
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