Product Reviews

PowerBooks have supported external monitors for years, but with today's digital displays even some PowerBook G4s struggle to drive them. In addition, even the last of the popular G3 PowerBooks, the FireWire-equipped Pismo, had a rather limiting 8Mb of video memory, a meagre amount to share between displays.

Village Tronic's VTBook is intended to help you get around these problems and drive modern displays at high speeds. The VTBook is a PC Card that provides an impressive 32Mb of video RAM and a digital monitor socket driven by a Trident XP2 graphics chip. It fits into the standard PC Card slot in the side of your PowerBook and, with the driver software installed, provides you with a new monitor socket.

Fast show

The driver software works with Mac OS 9.2.2, OS X 10.2.8 and OS X 10.3, and supports 3D acceleration in OS X. It handles an impressive range of resolutions, from basics such as 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 through to the 1920 x 1200 of a 23in Cinema Display in 24-bit colour, and up to 2048 x 1280 in 16-bit colour. We put the VTBook through its paces and found that it handled each display without a hitch, from old VGA monitors and projectors to high-end DVI LCD displays.

The VTBook is normally used to provide more desktop work space, but it can be used to mirror your PowerBook's existing display instead, which is a common requirement for presentations. If you have two external displays, you could use the laptop's own standard second monitor

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support as well to get a total of three displays, but even with the more normal setup of a single extra screen the VTBook's dedicated video memory and hardware will make it a preferable choice for almost all PowerBooks. It won't improve the performance of your built-in screen, of course, but it will give you a very responsive external display.

Village Tronic claims that if you have to run on battery while using VTBook, your PowerBook's battery life will go down by no more than 8% faster than normal. Precise battery life claims are hard to verify, but we didn't find any significant impact when used away from a PowerBook charger. We did, however, notice that the card got very hot while in the PC Card slot, even though it stayed within official operational limits.

The connection built into the PC Card itself is a standard DVI-I socket, compatible with DVI-A and DVI-D. According to Village Tronic, any display device with a DVI plug can work with the VTBook. A VGA adaptor is included with the card, so you should also be able to use older monitors. If you want to hook up to an Apple ADC display, you'll need to add a DVI-to-ADC adaptor, but by then it would start to become somewhat less of a slick solution.

Slot machine

The PC Card's bulky end, the part that provides the DVI socket, sticks out of the slot by about an inch. This is firmly attached to the rest of the card, but it could be snapped with rough handling. So don't leave it connected while moving your PowerBook around, and keep it in its protective case when not in use.

The case itself also caught our attention: the VTBook's 'Magic Box' storage device is a delight. It provides a robust clamshell-style container for the card and the DVI-to-VGA adaptor.

If you don't use a PowerBook, this product won't be any use. Indeed, the lack of a PC Card slot in the PowerBook G4 12in models and all iBooks means these are out as well. But if you do have a slot and you'd like fast, flexible support for external displays of virtually any size, this is the best solution we've seen.