Last year there were two G3 manufacturers making upgrades
for the PowerBook 1400, Newer Technology with their NuPowr
card and Vimage with their Vpower. Newer pulled the plug on
the NuPowr line and Vimage folded shop entirely. Last week
at the MacWorld expo, Sonnet Technologies announced that they
would be filling the void with their Crescendo G3/PB 333/512.
Expected in February, availability may be limited at first
due to pent up demand. Sonnet's card uses a low power copper
G3 processor from IBM and according to Sonnet will even extend
your battery life by 25%!
"This is win-win for the customer," said Sonnet
President Robert Farnsworth. "We are providing a dramatic
increase in performance and a significant extension of battery
life too."
PowerBook 1400 Info
Introduced at the end of 1996 for roughly $2,500, the PowerBook
1400 series was the most affordable of Apple's PowerBook offerings
at the time. The 1400 series included 117MHz, 133MHz and 166MHz
models. The 1400/117 lacked a level two cache while the 133MHz
and 166MHz models shipped with a 128k level two cache. Regardless
of the cache, all of the 1400's were hobbled by their 32 bit
system buses which formed a bottleneck for data traveling
to and from the processor. The 1400's came with a 11.3" inch
screen which was available as either dual-scan or active matrix.
The resolution was bumped up from the 640x480 of older PowerBooks
to 800x600. Many faulted the video as being too slow and with
1MB VRAM video was limited to 16 bit. As a fun bonus, all
of the 1400's offered the cool option of adding a custom back.
The scores below are from the 1400 upgrade cards available
last year and should give you some idea what to expect from
the Sonnet card. Note that the fastest card available was
Newer's G3/250. Sonnet's G3/333 should score well above any
of the cards below! The G3/PB 333/512 has an estimated street
price of $399.
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For Great Prices On Upgrades 