From: chuq@Apple.COM (Eeyore's Evil Twin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system,apple.general
Subject: Initial look: Norton Essentials for PowerBook (was GUM)
Date: 13 Dec 92 22:52:26 GMT
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.system
Organization: Pooh Corner Country Club -- A Planned Community

I noticed in the paper this morning that Symantec was advertising Norton
Essentials for Powerbook (was Guy's Utilities for Macintosh) as being
available, with a special intro price of $99 (list $129). So I wandered off
to CompUSA, fully expecting it to either not be in stock yet, or to have
already sold out.

They had about four copies. Street price about $65 plus tax. 

So I've brought it home, loaded it onto my 140 and been hacking, configuring
and generally tweaking at it for the last hour or so. Here's my initial
impression. 

NEP is a conglomeration of things to make the PowerBook behave better.
Functions include: Backlight dimming, Battery conservation, Battery status
reporting, automatic AppleTalk enable/disable (with server remount), Airport
quick boot/shutdown, Caps Lock control, Cursor replacement and location, a
Simple password/data subsystem, a quick notepad functionality, and file
syncing.  

It's nearest competitor is CPU, which is cheaper and not nearly as complete.
I'd been holding off waiting for a package with a decent file sync setup,
but I didn't want to pay $90 for Magnet, especially since it'd gotten some
underwhelming reviews.

NEP is a control panel, plus a series of documents stored in a folder in the
control panel folder. Adding/deleting functionality is simply by
adding/removing stuff from this folder (which should leave open the
possibility of new modules from Nortons, and possibly third party or
enterprising shareware folks). By default, the panel is in the extensions
folder to load early for the airport functionality. This is optional, but
their install util does so and puts an alias in the control panels for you.
It does nothing funky to system fils, and can be drag-installed.

Norton Startup says it uses 111K of system heap. Not bad for what you're
getting.

You can bring up the control panel from the apple menu, via a configurable
hot-key, or via a configurable (and disable-able) menu that sits off on the
right side of the menu bar when enabled. Various parts of NEP have displays
at can be turned off, stuck in the NEP menu if enabled, or stuck onto the
menu bar. You can REALLY clutter the menubar if you want. It's fun to look
at, but probably information overload -- but they've to great lengths to
give you the flexibility to do it your way rather than their way (with a
couple of weird exceptions, see below). I like that in a design.

Loading it up on my 140 showed no init conflicts, which is rather amazing
considering the various other things that I have that do various functions
NEP is replacing or that play with the menubar. It seems pretty stable.

Init's (and etc) that NEP replaced for me included SuperClock, Backlight
Dimmer, PowerSleep FKEY, PowerCursor and a disk-drive spin-down FKEY.

How's the thing work? Pretty well so far. A quick overview of the options
and what I thnk of them:

Backlight Dimmer: Pretty much the same as the free panel from Apple, except
(a) there are three battery levels: A/C, Battery and Low Battery (defined by
default as the last 20% of battery power -- but configurable. ALL NEP
functions use those three battery states and allow configuration separately
for each state as appropriate). It also allows you to dim backlight during
startup to save power, and adds a "dim now" hot key. The added features,
especially the dim now key, are nice to have.

Battery Saver: Let's you set hard disk spindown, system sleep and processor
sleep for the three battery states separately. Also allows you to set
separate parameters for specific applications to take precedent over the
defaults, so you can, say turn off the disk faster for RAM-resident apps and
leave it on longer for apps that access the disk a lot. Nicely done.

Battery gauge: You can choose one of six different gauge types, for either
the menu bar or the MEP menu. Also an optional charging indicator when the
battery is recharging, so you can tell if you're at full charge or not. Will
(if you choose) estimate remaining time or show you the exact voltage on the
battery. 

Appletalk Instant Access: turns on Atalk when you plug in, turns off when
you unplug, to save memory and battery. Allows an override for ARA so Atalk
stays on, will remount volumes that are supposed to be mounted at startup if
you wish. 

Airport Shortdown: so you can powerup and quickly shut down again in airport
security gates. Looks okay, but I'm not interested.

Caps Lock: lets you turn off caps lock or redefine it (I'm using
opt-Capslock). Plays sound when enabled, and can put a reminder in the
menubar.

PowerCursor: lets you use alternate, easier to see cursors for default
cursors.The thick I-bar is very useful. The coffee cup is cute.

PowerGuard: basic-level ecurity. Passwords, screen blanking. I haven't used
it.

QuickNotes: Yet Another NotPad thingie. I wonder why they bothered. Not
particularly interesting to me.

A couple of good interface things they did: there's a special sub-panel you
can bring up to configure all the indicators without having to switch from
sub-panel to sub-panel (which is great), and the same for the hot-keys. VERY
nice addition (two huzzahs and a thankyou).

Finally, the file sync part. Lets you define folders to sync across a
mounted server. The folders can contain aliases, and you can either resolve
nested folders or resolve at the top-level only. You can also choose to
resolve aliases or not. In case both sides are modified, it lets you decide
how to react: newer one wins or lets you choose (or abort). 

The sync stuff works decently. I've set up folders on both my home machine
and powerbook and loaded aliases to various things in them, then defined
them as a sync point. SyncIt set them up right and handled the conflicts I
tossed it fine. It seems to be reasonably efficient speed-wise, also.
Perfectly useful for most reasonably simple setups, but not a replacement
for a backup program and probably won't keep the power users happy for long.

Other trivia: allows you to remove the balloon help menu.

Overall, I give it **** out of *****. A good package, well worth the street
price. Replaces a number of 'standard' utilities, removing INIT/CDEV
complexity and the possible conflict problems that implies, with efficient
use of memory while adding useful functionality. Not bad, folks.

But not perfect. I've noticed a few glitches, mostly around SyncIt:

o the battery-power graphs (especially the one that gives time left) uses
about twice the menu bar I'd like it to. Something narrower would be nice. 

o You cannot tell SyncIt to sync the entire disk to a remote server. (Hmm. I
wonder if I made an alias of the disk and stuck it in  a folder....). This
is something I'd really like to do, so I could mirror image my powerbook on
a Syquest.

o SyncIt resolves aliases properly, but only if they're named "filename" or
"filename alias". People who use other suffixes take note (like us Nom de
Plume users who use accent-a). That could get frustrating fast, and really
doesn't make a lot of sense. Either relax it or make it configurable. 

o SyncIt, unlike the rest of NEP, sticks something in the menubar, and you
can't get rid of it or move it to the NEP pulldown menu. This is
inconsistent with the rest of the packages interface design, which is
grating, not ot mention the fact that I don't WANT the sync icon in the
menu. Overall, the SyncIt user interface is a bit crufty around the edges,
especially compared to the rest of the package, so that (and the fact that
there are functionality changes in the README for it) lead me to believe it
was being worked on right up to the ship date and it's not quite as polished.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a cleaned up version released as a patch some
day.

Overall, though, my gripes are minor and the features are major. A nice move
forward for PowerBook functionality and usefulness. And I no longer have to
try to remember which version of my address book is on what machine (yay!).

Definitely a "you want this" package for PowerBook users.


-- 
            Chuq "IMHO" Von Rospach, ESD Support & Training (DAL/AUX)
                      Member, SFWA =+= Editor, OtherRealms
                chuq@apple.com | GEnie: MAC.BIGOT | ALink:CHUQ 

                       Sterling Holloway: We'll miss you.