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Okay, so this's a 170 - but it's nearly the same.Anyone want to donate a jpeg or two of your beloved PB150? (You'll get full photographic credit!). If so, email mehere.

Specifications:

Introduced 1993
68030 processor @ 33MHz
4MB RAM expandable to 40MB
9.5" 2-bit (4 grays) passive matrix display
640x480 resolution
120MB-250MB IDE hard disk drive (typically 250MB in later production models)
Trackball

The PowerBook 150 is a bit of an oddball. It's really just the final update to the original PowerBook 140. It provided few technological innovations and was not as advanced as some of its predecessors such as the  PowerBook 160 and 180, and it was soundly beaten on features and technology by the release in 1994 of the PowerBook 500 series and the PowerBook Duo 280 and 280c. As a result, left over 150s could be found on sale as late as 1996 (I know; an Apple retailer offered me a new one).

So why would you consider one? Well, there're several factors. You might be choosing between several older PB models (100, 140, 160, 180, 170), all around the same price, and deciding which one best suits your needs. One thing tthe 150 does offer is a greyscale screen (not available on the 140 and 170) and a generous RAM limit of 40MB (more than the 500!). The 150 is also as fast as PB180/180c or Duo 230/250/270 and weighs nearly 1.5lbs less than other 100-series PBs (apart from the 100 itself). PB150s have much larger standard hard drives than the early PowerBooks, and this can save a bit as 2.5" SCSI drives tend to be a little on the expensive side.So if the price and configuration is competitive, a 150 might be a good buy.

What you get:

The 150 is as fast as a Mac IIvx, faster than an LCIII and probably faster than a IIci. It takes Duo memory cards (with adapter) and so 24MB is easy (40MB is possible with the right sized card, but they're expensive and hard to find. Rethink). The 33MHz 68030 is fast enough to run modern software and deliver the internet at a fair - though not blinding - pace. It will run an OS as recent as 7.6.1 and Netscape Navigator (standalone) 4.08 (with 16MB RAM or more). The greyscale screen means web pages deliver contrast and shading, although the (unique to the 150) 2-bit screen isn't as good as the 4-bit passive displays on the PB160 , Duo 210/230 and the 520. Nevertheless, it's reasonable, if not up to the bright and clear B&W display on the PB170.

The fact that the 150 is a newer Mac than some of the others also means it may not have had such wear and tear. Its screen - and more importantly its backlight - is likely to last longer as a result. When you inspect a 150, take a copy of TechTool (www.micromat.com [freeware - latest version 1.1.8]) on floppy which will tell you how many hours the Mac has been on (or at least how many hours since the PRAM bAttery was last changed). If you get 0 or 'n/a' the PRAM battery's dead. Or if it saya half an hour or just a few hours, the owner turned it on just before you rolled up. Runtime 1.2 will do the same job as TechTool and tell you the number of hours the PB's been on.

Two glaring problems stand out with the 150: first, it has no video port and no way of adding one. This means no big external monitor or mirroring or virtual desktop (but see below for possible solutions).

Second, there is no ADB port. So it's not possible to add an external keyboard or even a mouse. In this respect, the 150 can more or less only be a notebook, and not an alternative desktop Mac.

There are some pros as well as cons though. The 150 has the dubious distinction of being the first PowerBook ever to utilise an IDE hard drive. This was done partly to reduce the 150's cost, as later, more expensive PBs, like the 280 and 500, used SCSI HDDs. However, IDE has been the standard at Apple since about 1995. IDE drives come from the PC world and are cheaper and more plentiful than SCSI drives. Apple also argued that IDE drives in large capacities come out before SCSI variants. It does mean you can throw an enormous, multi-gig HDD into a 150, whereas it's difficult to find 2.5" SCSI drives at reasonable prices at capacities larger than about 1.4GB. By contrast, 2 or 4GB IDE HDDs can be acquired relatively inexpensively (*and I mean relatively*). The downside is that IDE drives - especially no-name brands - can be lousy quality and not last long. They're also slower than SCSI. The 150s did not ship with fast IDE drives at all, so if you have a 150 and can lay your hands on a quality IDE drive, install that and enjoy the speed boost. You'll find IBM is a major vendor of 2.5" IDE drives (and indeed was an OE - original eqipment - supplier for Apple PowerBooks. IBMs have come with a two-pronged reputation: some swear by them, others at them. My IBM HDD in my PowerBook 5300 is nearly 4 years old now, has done millions of writes and hasn't been problematic...yet.

Speaking of which, here's another neat trick TechTool does: if you click on the button in TechTool's window marked 'General' (it's the button on the right), it gives you a quick rundown on the Mac. It tellls you what it is, what System version it's running etc. But if you scroll down a little but to where it lists the hard drives (and any attached ones) it'll actually tell you how many writes the hard drive has done. Good trick, hey? So even if the PRAM battery has been replaced at some point, you'll have a good idea exactly how hard that HDD has worked.

The use of IDE also meant that Apple had to use new drive formatting software as the traditional HDSC program only worked with SCSI drives. The 150's ROM knows it has an IDE HDD, so you have to use the special formatter (it's available from ftp.apple.com under 'software updates'. It's in the '150' folder in the 'PowerBook' folder). Alternatively, I think it's safe to use Drive Setup, Apple's more recent formatting software. Use version 1.3. If you're using System 7.5, you can use Drive Setup's latest version (1.7.3) quite safely. Drive Setup formats both IDE and SCSI drives. It should also format (from about version 1.6.1 of Drive Setup onwards) most third-party IDE drives. If not, most, if not all, 3rd party drives come with formatting software. If you buy 2nd-hand, and Apple's Drive Setup doesn't work, get yourself a good formatter like FWB's HDT Personal Edition (or the full one if you must be a control freak), or Silverlining or whatever.

The 150 also features something most of the 100-series PBs don't: full 640x480 resolution (many of the other 100s have only 640x400 resolution). This makes some games possible on the 150, but don't ask which as I'm clueless about games. I don't imagine they'd look too good in 4 grays anyway (and most games demand 256 colours or more except the older ones). Nevertheless, the 640x480 resolution, combined with grayscale, facilitates web browsing as well as word processing, spreadsheets and databases.

So what runs? (and what doesn't).

More or less anything that isn't '040 or PPC only. Even QuarkXPress and earlier versions of Photoshop are usable if slow. But you're more likely to be using ClarisWorks (AppleWorks) Office, Word 5.1, Excel 4, Quicken, Filemaker Pro (up to version 3.0), MacProject, WordPerfect (v.2.0-3.5) and Hypercard. As you can see, '030 PowerBooks run most modern (or relatively modern) software. If you must, you can run Word 6.0.1, Excel 5.0 and PowerPoint 4.0. Yes, Word 6 etc. is buggy but some people need its features. It's their choice even though I personally recommend Word 5.1a. For the record, Word 6 and Excel 5 run at a pretty decent speed on a 33MHz 68030. So they're usable if you need the compatibility,  if not speedy.

As noted above, you can use graphics software on the 150. The main problem is the screen: unless you're working with black and white images, the screen will make colour graphics look a little muddy and rather grainy. It's better than pure black and white though when things can sometimes look like a reverse negative. This means you can use Netscape 3.04 on a 150 (if you want to; it requires 7MB RAM minimum) as Netscape 3 doesn't always display grayscale images correctly on a B&W screen like the PB140/170.
 
 

Circling the globe

The PB150 is among the fastest '030 based Macs Apple built - not just out of the '030 PBs, but all of them. It has no FPU which aids graphics on the net, but its 33MHz 68030 means it's faster than a IIci, IIvx or PB160 and as fast as an LCIII+ (the rarer 33MHz version of the LCIII). It's nearly as fast as the PB180 in most operations. However, its relatively slow IDE drive can slow things down. You can easily replace the 150's HDD with a relatively inexpensive, larger, newer and faster drive and gain a significant speed boost.

With a 40MB RAM capacity and a fast '030, the 150 runs SpeedDoubler comfortably (see the  PowerBook 5300 page for more details regarding the necessity of SpeedDoubler). SD is really essential for the net, using intelligent and fast disk caching to improve speed.Video display times will also improve as SD not only increases speed of disk accesses, but also lets that window open and display a bit faster.

A 150 with 16 or 20MB or RAM can easily run Netscape Navigator 4.08 (standalone). Navigator demands 16MB physical RAM to run(not apportioned to it; the Mac must simply contain 16+ MB). If you use the earlier (if you can find them) Netscape 4.0 or 4.01 you need only 8MB. I've tried IE 3.01 with '030 Macs but it doesn't seem to be very fast. It works very well, admittedly, with '040 and higher PowerBooks. But I don't install it on '030s. Netscape 2.02 is fast on virtually any Mac but of course lacks Java so it can crash or just quit (usually exits harmlessly) when it encounters Java. I've yet to thoroughly test Netscape 3.04 on 68030s, so that might just be the compromise, though I'd recommend 12MB RAM to run it. Better still, like Netscape 2.02, it has built-in news and mail.

The shareware entries are worth considering here. iCab, from www.icab.de, is available in both German and English versions. It's presently (June 1999) in beta but will be available as a DM49 product shortly. A free Lite version with fewer features will also be available. iCab is very space efficient (1.7MB HDD space and 2MB RAM required) but can be slow, although its page caching can be as fast as Explorer. It has advanced features that neither of the big browsers have yet (not even in the Windoze versions), such as the ability to download or view every link on the page. Using Mac Runtime for Java (MRJ), iCab also deals with javascript. For myYahoo, it needs to identify itself as Netscape (it's user-configurable) but it works. Try it and see how you like it. And you can't beat the price.

Another alternative is Wannabe 68K (also available in PowerPC version) which I'm a bit - a lot - of a fan of. It's a text-only browser that runs on all '030 and up PowerBooks and is probably the fastest browser you'll ever use. It's still in alpha stage, but it has *never* crashed on me and has support for multple windows, downloads, copying link locations, downloading images and Yahoo, Altavista and Usenet search facilities (no support for forms though). My hat's off to David T. Pierson who wrote it. You can download Wannabe at <http://pluto.njcc.com/~dtp/wb2/wannabe.html>
Wannabe requires about 900K of disk space and 2MB RAM. Get it now.

Connecting to the net is also easy on the 150 (just as it is on any Mac, really).

Expanding the 150

The 150 uses Duo memory cards with an adapter module. This gives you a 40MB RAM limit but bear in mind that Duo memory is often expensive. Many 150s have been upgraded however, and a 12MB config is quite reasonable.

The absence of external video gives you only 3rd party options. Scuzzygraph or other 3rd party SCSI-video adapters are out there. If the adapter has a built-in accelerator, so much the better: it'll speed up graphics redraw and video performance generally. Different products will support different monitors and resolutions, so check before you buy. The internal VRAM of the 150 is 512K and will support 256 colours on a range of monitors. However, Apple does not officially support external video on the 150, so your mileage may vary. Firms such as Enhanced Cable Technology, Griffin Technology, and MacAdapt may be able to help you out with adapters.

I'm not aware of any solutions to the lack of an ADB port. However, the 150's serial port does everything most other Macs do. It lets you connect to serial and AppleTalk printers, as well as connect to two or more Macs in a network. Want ethernet? Both SCSI-to-ethernet and LocalTalk-to-ethernet solutions exist; the latter's the better bet. Farallon makes a good LocalTalk-to-ethernet adapter that'll let you connect to your office network and to office printers. A simple twisted pair (i.e. 10 base T) crossover cable will let you connect up to your (or anyone else's) iMac or other ethernet-equipped Mac, PC or printer. Ethernet is particularly useful for PC printers which are not equipped with AppleTalk.

LocalTalk will, of course, allow you to talk to other Macs without that ethernet adapter investment. So you can share, synchronise and back up files to a desktop or off-site Mac. If you need to install CD ROM software and you don't have a CD ROM - no problem: just hook up to a LocalTalk equipped Mac (anything prior to an iMac, Blue G3 or Lombard PowerBook) and mount the CD on the 150's desktop. It's not fast, but it works.

Any Apple printer and a number of 3rd party printers (HP, Lexmark laser printers) all work with the 150. So any StyleWriter/Colour StyleWriter and any Apple LaserWriter works. Any older inkjet (like Epson or Brother for example) which has a 8 pin mini-DIN serial connector (and a Mac driver!) works.

The Bottom Line

For the budget-minded road warrior, the 150 is a very cheap way to get into a PowerBook. Its RAM limit is good (and its less expensive than 160/180 RAM), its screen reasonable (640x480) and its performance is usable. For probably less than $US200 you get a pretty new (or not so old) PowerBook that weighs only 5.5lbs that can do email, word processing, databases, spreadsheets, news and light-duty internet. Although it has limitations, it possesses certain advantages over earlier members of the 100-series.