Speaking of PowerBooks, we continue to mess with a PowerBook G3/233, and it continues to impress the heck out of us. More importantly, though, it continues to impress PC users-- at least, in our experience. In the process of getting this thing set up with the required software, network configurations, etc., we're seeing the sleek new laptop act as a magnet that draw an incredible amount of attention among Mac users and PC users alike. The upshot is this: in addition to being a great laptop, the PowerBook G3 is a portable evangelism machine, especially when Virtual PC is installed.

We tried sticking this thing in front of a few PC users in the office and showing them some of the nicer features, like the extraordinarily crisp 13.3" 1024x768 screen, the full-size and super-comfortable keyboard, the enormous palm rests, the surprisingly good stereo speakers, etc. Everyone agrees that the PowerBook G3 is a marvel of industrial design. When we fired up Virtual PC to show them that even the slowest Powerbook G3 is fast enough to do decent Windows emulation for productivity tasks, things got really interesting. One Wintel laptop user played with it for a bit, then stated that he's now definitely going to get a Mac at home, since the only reason he's still struggling with registry corruption and IRQ conflicts on his PC is because of a single Windows-only program he needs to run, and Virtual PC takes care of that. Another person who bought a Pentium-based system a couple of months ago took a look at Virtual PC on the PowerBook and plainly announced that, had he known that emulation was so fast, he would have bought a Mac instead. Still a third mentioned that the Windows performance in Virtual PC seemed faster than on his Pentium 133 at home, and he was now seriously considering a Mac to replace it-- especially once I mentioned that even the $1299 iMac would likely run Virtual PC even faster, due to the backside cache on the processor, and then blew his socks off by showing what the G3 could do with native Mac software by firing up the Myth: The Fallen Lords demo.

If Apple really wants to make a bold move to increase market share, they should come up with some program by which Mac evangelists could have easier access to the new PowerBooks-- some kind of price reduction, or a bonus system by which each Mac sale inspired by an evangelist demo would generate points towards free equipment, or something-- because in a day of just setting up and testing one of these gorgeous machines, we've gotten three PC users to consider switching platforms. Alas, most Mac users are probably not going to have access to a PowerBook G3 for a while, but at the very least you may want to try one out when Apple's Summer User Group Tour comes to town. Go check out the new PowerBooks and get a sneak preview of the iMac. And remember to drag along a PC-using friend.