Here's what PC Magazine had to say about Mac's claims that it's new 250Mhz G3 Laptop could beat a 300- or 333 Mhz Pentium II:
By Daniel Grotta & Sally Wiener Grotta
June 3, 1998 -- Apple proudly proclaims that its latest generation of PowerBook G3 laptops will outperform "any Wintel notebook at all key price points." What's more, Apple boasts that the 250-MHz G3 notebook we tested (which costs $4,100 street) will score higher than any 300-MHz desktop and is, in fact, comparable to a 333-MHz Pentium II.
What's Inside
There's no question that the G3s are fast. Their processor--the first of the PowerPC family to be optimized specifically for Mac OS--uses 0.25-micron technology and is only 67 square millimeters. It draws 5 watts and runs so cool that it doesn't require a fan. The zippier performance results from this CPU combined with 64K of L1 cache (twice that of a Pentium II CPU), 1MB of L2 cache (most PCs have a maximum of 512K), an 83-MHz system bus (faster than that of a PC laptop), SDRAM architecture, 4MB of SGRAM graphics memory, an IDE hard disk, a 20X CD-ROM drive, and an ATI 3D RAGE LT chip for 2-D/3-D graphics acceleration. But as our test results indicate, the G3's performance may or may not be faster than that of comparable Wintel platforms. It all depends upon the application and function.
On either side of the G3 is an easy-to-open spring-loaded clip, which allows for rapid removal or insertion of batteries or hot-swappable drives. There are two side-mounted 32-bit PC Card slots (two Type I or II cards or one Type III card); the lower slot supports Zoomed Video, which allows fast, direct access to the video controller. Also built in are an array of Mac ports and connectors, including IrDA, sound and microphone, ADB (keyboard/mouse), printer/modem, Ethernet, SCSI, external monitor, and S-video-out ports.
In addition to using software-activated commands, the G3 comes with buttons to control volume, mute, and screen brightness and contrast. Because there's no reset button (you must press the function, Ctrl, and Shift keys instead), if the computer freezes and requires a hard reboot, you must either remove the battery or pull out the power cord.
Unlike some earlier Mac laptops, the G3 lets you access its innards without special tools. Once you've removed the batteries/drives, flipping two switches inside will release the keyboard. You may then remove the heat shield by unfastening two screws, exposing both the hard disk and the memory DIMMs. The only dissonant note in an otherwise excellent design is the G3's weight: Depending upon the battery/drive combination, the unit is a hefty 7.7 to 7.9 pounds.
The RJ45 network interface is 10Base-T--not 100Base-T--but the 56K modem comes with 4MB of flash ROM for upgrades. The printer and modem share the same port, so you'll need an external adapter to run them simultaneously. The G3 comes with a built-in VGA adapter for attaching a standard PC-configured color monitor. Because everything is built-in, there's no need for a separate docking station.
Our test machine had one of the best 13.3-inch XGA screens we've seen--bright and contrasty, even in strong light, with good color fidelity and saturation, edge-to-edge sharpness, and a fast refresh rate and stable signal. The 4MB of SGRAM lets users display 24-bit color at 1,152-by-870 or 16-bit color at 1,280-by-1,024. The G3s with 12-inch screens come with 2MB of SGRAM, which yields a top resolution of 800-by-600 in 24-bit color or 1,024-by-768 in 16-bit color.
Because of the ability to display photorealistic colors at high resolution, the G3s with 13.3- and 14-inch screens are particularly useful with image-editing applications (like Adobe Photoshop), although a large screen adds significantly to the cost. Apple is working with third-party developers to produce a CardBus video card that will let the G3 drive a second independent monitor. (IXMicro has announced the IX3D RoadRocket, a CardBus that delivers dual-screen capability.)
Given its raw speed and System 8.1 refinements, we were unsurprised but nonetheless delighted when our machine booted up extremely fast--even with a number of extensions enabled. The hard disk is also fast, letting a 10MB TIFF file open in seconds.
What did surprise us (considering Apple's prerelease hype and its own benchmark numbers) was that the 250-MHz G3's performance was only marginally better on some of our real-world tests than a 300-MHz Pentium II desktop with a Number Nine Revolution graphics card; it was notably slower in others. Apple PowerMac systems, including G3 notebooks, do well with graphics applications that are optimized for RISC architecture, but they lag far behind in business and other applications.
Our first comparison used several common functions in Photoshop 4.0.1: Resize, Gaussian Blur, Unsharpen Mask, Lighting Effects, and Rotate. On our first run, we used Adobe's default settings: a rather miserly 10MB of RAM, a 1,024K disk cache, virtual memory, and RAM disk enabled. Since all but one of our tests used a 10MB TIFF file, this setting proved impractical, because it required using virtual memory, which is slow. We then changed to Apple's recommended memory setting (50MB of RAM, disk cache of 96K, and both virtual memory and RAM disk off). Adobe advised us to set Photoshop's memory to 1MB less than the physical RAM in the computer, or 63MB.
Adobe's and Apple's suggested settings were slower than the sweet spot we discovered by trial and error (35MB of RAM, 1,024K disk cache, and both virtual memory and RAM disk enabled). Since our test PC runs under Windows 95 and not Mac OS, it was not necessary to tweak the memory settings. The G3 was slightly faster than the PC on Resize and Lighting Effects but marginally slower on Gaussian Blur, Unsharpen Mask, and Rotate.
We saw significant performance differences between the G3 and the PC in Microsoft Excel and Word, and we found no difference when raising Microsoft's default memory setting higher than 10MB. Microsoft's recent release of Office 98 for Mac is a vast improvement over the earlier sluggish, freeze-prone version; but as our tests indicate, PCs still have across-the-board performance superiority under Windows. On average, the PowerBook G3 took almost twice as long to perform simple Excel and Word macro tests as a 300-MHz NEC Direction SPL 300 Pentium II machine took to run comparable tests.
The G3s are superbly engineered, well-built notebooks. Mac users will undoubtedly embrace them as the best operating under OS 8. But they are not likely to win many converts among PC power users, because the bragging about more speed and power is somewhat exaggerated.
Macintosh PowerBook G3. Street price: $4,100 with 250-MHz PowerPC CPU, 64MB RAM, 4GB hard disk, 13.3-inch TFT screen, 20X CD-ROM drive. Apple Computer Co., Cupertino, CA; 800-538-9696; www.apple.com.