VTBook 32MB DDR Graphics Card
Manufacturer: Village Tronic
Company: Small Dog Electronics
Price: $245.00
http://www.villagetronic.com
Requirements: Apple PowerBook with Cardbus 32 bit, Mac OS 9.2.x or 10.2.x or later installed. Translation: Wallstreet, Lombard, Pismo, Titanium and Aluminum 15″ and 17″ PowerBooks can use this without modification.
Year of the Laptop
For me, the “year of the laptop” began in 2000 when I purchased a new PowerBook Pismo to replace my G3 350 and Blueberry iBook revA as my sole workstation. For more than 10 years I had been using desktop Macs with multiple monitors and a low-end Mac PowerBook of one sort or another as my mobile companion. Oh, I tried the Duo experience for a couple of years, but my publishing and graphics projects pushed me toward more powerful desktops with multiple monitors. I generally used 3 monitors and sometimes more. The Pismo offered an external VGA adapter and, with the aid of a PC Card graphics adapter, I could connect a second monitor and have three screens (including the built-in 14″ LCD) to handle the desktop-hogging graphics applications I used for hours at a time. At that time, the only PC Card adapter for such purposes was the Display-2-Go 4 MB PCMCIA card from Margi, which I purchased from Small Dog.
For several months I was able to use two external monitors in addition to my laptop’s screen and life was good. But at best, it was a love/hate relationship with the Margi card. The drivers were prone to break with every minor OS update. The move to OS X was traumatic and basically rendered the card useless after 10.1.4 came along all the way up to 10.2, which brought it back. But after 10.2.2 it broke again. There were also issues with the G4 Titanium laptops. With my move to a 1 GHz Titanium PowerBook at the end of last year, I basically had given up hope that I’d ever get to use more than one external LCD display with my PowerBook. After several e-mails from Margi telling me an update was “under development”, I suspected that they either didn’t have the inclination or didn’t have the know-how to build drivers for OS X. (That’s not necessarily a slam against Margi; they make some very useful products; creating drivers for Mac OS X is tricky business, especially as Apple has been moving it along at a rapid rate making it difficult for developers of low-level device drivers to pin down a target!) As a result, with two external 17″ LCD monitors, only one was able to be used with the PowerBook. The other sat idle when it wasn’t being used as a video monitor.
The Promise of Spring
…and then, one day last spring I spied a brief report at MacSurfer pointing to http://vtbookdd.com which was a simple preÃannouncement that long time Mac graphics card specialist, Village Tronic, was going to unveil a 32 MB graphics card for laptops with PCMCIA slots sometime in May …then June …then July …then August…sigh.
It’s been a long wait, but as this review will now point out, a worthwhile wait in the end. Last weekend, UPS delivered a package to me, drop shipped by Village Tronic via Small Dog, containing this pristine piece of hardware. Actually, it came as a complete surprise because Randy Case from Village Tronic had forgotten to tell me he would drop ship one directly to me. When I opened the shipping carton I found a package uniquely designed to hold the 1) directions and specs for installation and operation on a Mac PowerBook, 2) cdrom with drivers for Mac OS 9.2.x and 10.2.x and 3) rounded, hinged container, the ‘Magic Box’ for the 32 MB PC Card with DVI-I output and one DVI-VGA adapter.
Brass Tacks
I had two laptops for testing purposes: my 1 GHz Titanium PowerBook 15″ and a 400mhz G3 PowerBook Pismo (firewire) with 14″ screen. My two external monitors are Neovo S-17 LCD monitorswhich I specifically selected because the dpi was relatively close to the TiBook’s dpi, rendering window sizes similarly when moved from screen to screen. Also, they have multiple inputs with DVI, VGA, and S-Video making them very flexible for my needs.
The driver installation went smoothly, without a hitch. Both laptops were running Mac OS 10.2.6 at the time. Updating to 10.2.8 later in the testing introduced no news, which is good news! The documentation, while sparse, is clear and easy to follow. The main point to note was that Jaguar has some limitations that make it impossible to hot-swap this card while the computer is running. It is necessary to shut down before inserting the card WITH attached monitor. Likewise, one must shutdown before ejecting the card. And the laptop cannot sleep when the card is installed while running Jaguar. As you might expect, earlier versions of Mac OS X will not work with this card.
With the shaky experience I had had using the Margi card which gave me, at best, 8 months of use out of the past 2-1/2 years of ownership, I had asked Randy if he knew whether the card would be compatible with Panther? I didn’t want to purchase a tool that would be either useless with the soon-to-be released OS X 10.3 or require me to wait for new drivers for weeks or months before I could use it! Randy couldn’t answer that question conclusively, but he did say that Village Tronic was working very closely with Apple and that he expected they were actually building it with Panther in mind. Much to my relief, the included instructions mentioned that most of the current limitations in using the card (sleep, hot-swapping) would be fixed with the release of Panther! While I haven’t tested this card with Panther, (yes, I have pre-ordered a family-pack to arrive on the 25th), I am encouraged by the instructions and fully expect that I will be able to continue to use two external monitors with my PowerBook through the Panther transitions. The software specs included in the package included a comparison between Mac OS 9.2.x, 10.2.x and 10.3.x, so they are definitely anticipating hot swapping capabilities to return.
A cursory look at the hardware and software specs tells the user that this card has a maximum resolution of 1920×1440 in VGA or 1920×1200 in DVI or ADC. It uses a Trident XP2 graphics chip with 2D and 3D acceleration (3D not available in Mac OS 9.2) and if used with a PowerBook running strictly off the battery would negatively impact battery life by approximately 4%.
After installing the drivers, I shut down the TiBook and then attached the 2nd monitor to the card with its DVI cable and inserted the card. It went in smoothly and felt secure. A problem I had experienced with the older Margi PC Card was that the cable design could cause some strange behavior or color anomalies in the attached monitor if the cable wasn’t aligned just right at the point of attachment. However, the design of the VTBook PC Card is superior in every respect and it is just like having a 2nd DVI port added to your laptop. Once attached and Mac OS X launched, I brought up the Display Preferences and adjusted resolutions and arrangements appropriately. That’s all there is to it, really. Macs are just naturals with multiple monitors.
Next, I shut down the TiBook, removed the card, rebooted in Mac OS 9, installed the drivers for Mac OS 9, shut down, inserted the VTBook card and started up in Mac OS 9. For those diehard Classic users, this card is a no-brainer if you are attempting to use a PowerBook as your primary workstation. Since Classic behaves, generally, faster on a given hardware platform than it’s modern but distant cousin, there is even less difference when comparing the performance from this card with the onboard video output. It just works, and wonderfully so. No color problems, no anomalies of any kind. With Mac OS 9.2 comes the added ability to hot-plug (although it is still recommended that the user shut down completely before removing the card if attached to a live monitor.) In addition panning video modes works in classic and it includes a custom control panel that adds further tweaking capabilities.
Last, but not least, I knew that there are many users who, sometime around the dawn of this new century, found that for about 90% of their computing needs, faster computers didn’t really bring much to the table. They are happily using 1999-2000 G3 PowerBooks and using their saved dollars to do more exciting things than figuring out what software or hardware is no longer compatible with their new computer …it’s working so why fix it? We took the G3 Pismo through the same routine as the TiBook. Both computers have identical operating systems, both have 1 GB of ram, and both can fit into the same workflow and hardware setup. The only difference really was that the G3 has analog video output, not digital, so that there was a noticeable difference in the VTBook’s digital output to a digital LCD versus the PowerBook onboard VGA output. In the case of the Pismo, the preferred 2nd monitor becomes the VTBook’s monitor. The Pismo has a 16 MB ATI Radeon Mobility chip to split between two monitors, whereas the TiBook has 4 times the ram and many times the throughput available to it. For these older laptops with 32 MB of onboard video or less, the 32 MB VTBook PC Card is even more of an enhancement! For older, lower powered graphic engines, I’d recommend using 16 bit color if attempting to use Mac OS X, but the VTBook is fine in 16 or 24 bit from my experience.
Sad to say, I don’t happen to have a 23″ Apple Cinema HD, or even one of the older 22″ ones, but I have been to some Apple Stores and used a new PowerBook connected to one and it’s a great combination. The only thing better than that would be to have another one connected to the VTBook PC Card! That’s right, this card will drive a 23″ Cinema in 24-bit mode! Think of it! Now wipe up the drool and get online to Small Dog and place your order before they are all gone!! (Note: to drive Apple’s ADC displays, a DVI to ADC Adapter is needed and is not included with this package.)
Bottom line? Designed right, packed tight, and full of graphics might! You won’t be disappointed. And at less than $250, you need this if for no other reason than to justify to your spouse the maxed credit card when you order your 2nd Cinema!
MyMac Rating: 5 out of 5
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