© 1994 Lawrence I. Charters
Washington Apple Pi Journal, Vol. 16, no. 12, December 1994, pp. 45-47.
From Darkness, Light
In the beginning, there was darkness. And there was the power switch. Hidden in the most remote possible location, you flipped it on and energy flowed, bringing life and a smiling face to the world of Macintosh. Flip it the other way and darkness returned.
It wasn’t really good, but it was OK.
Then, in the Third Year of Macintosh, there was the Power On key. Conveniently located on the keyboard, cryptically labeled with an odd triangle, you pressed it and energy flowed. You pressed it again and nothing happened. Instead, acknowledging that a Macintosh was an intelligent entity, Apple allowed the Macintosh to turn itself off via the Shut Down command from the Special menu. No more Draconian switches to bring on the night.
And it was good.
It was more than good: the 1987-vintage Macintosh II was a revolutionary machine, offering speed, virtually unlimited expansion, stereo sound-all kinds of digital riches. And the relatively unheralded “soft power” key was a dramatic step; the Macintosh was allowed to close down its own files and tidily put itself to bed. Untrained users, temporary employes and relatives who played with your machine when you weren’t looking couldn’t just kill the power (and your work) by flipping the wrong switch. Personal computing was changed forever: it was more orderly, more civilized, more — if you prefer — user friendly.
“My nine year old daughter has become an ardent fan of the PowerKey. The box itself, through the multiple outlets, allows her to reduce the clutter around her Macintosh LC by allowing everything to be plugged into one ‘thing;’ the Power Key.”
Well, maybe not forever. While every version of the Macintosh II had a Power On key, the low-cost LC line did not. Nor did any version of the “compact Macs” except the Color Classic. The Quadra, Centris, and Power Mac lines were well behaved except for the Centris and Quadra 605, 610 and 660av, and Power Mac 6100. As for the Performa line, only three living individuals understand what differentiates a Performa from a regular Mac, and which models offer what features.
These same three people, all accountants, all escapees from a lunatic asylum, were also the same people who decided that some Macs didn’t need a Power On key. Under the guise of saving money, darkness seeped in.
Sophisticated Salvation
But life would be unbearable without hope, and there is not just hope, but salvation. Sophisticated Circuits, a talented hardware company in Bothell, Washington, has designed PowerKey. lt
This, alone, is impressive. But that isn’t all: when you press the Power On key on your keyboard, not only will you power up the Macintosh, you will also power up anything else plugged in to the Power Key. With four power outlets, this offers a wealth of possibilities, from the obvious (your monitor) to the modern-day essentials: an external hard disk drive, an external CD-ROM, a fast modem to connect you to the Information Superhighway.
My nine year old daughter has become an ardent fan of the PowerKey. The box itself, through the multiple outlets, allows her to reduce. the clutter around her Macintosh LC by allowing everything to be plugged into one “thing;” the Power Key. Since it offers surge protection, it also helps protect the computer from random power glitches.
Her chief joy, however, is that she no longer has to reach around behind everything to turn on her computer, and she no longer has to power up three different things: the LC, her monitor, and her external hard drive. One key press powers everything up. Selecting Shut Down from the Special menu safely closes all programs and powers everything down.
The PowerKey package also includes a copy of CE Software’s QuicKeys Lite macro program, with pre-defined macros to turn the computer off at set times plus a few other convenient functions. She’s learned to use QuicKeys to automatically open and close her favorite programs and folders, and do some other functions that please her and puzzle me.
She’d trade it all in for a Power Mac 8100, of course, but at less than $80, Power Key will make life much more pleasant while she endures the long wait.
Energy✭Star and Floppy Flops
There is more to life than convenience; there is also the law. In 1993, the Clinton Administration decreed the federal government would buy only Energy✭Star compliant personal computers and printers, and would heavily encourage computer networking. Computer networking allows shared resources, which reduces costs, and also reduces the government’s energy bill. Energy✭Star computers take a more direct approach: they require less electricity to work, and shut themselves off when idle.
On the good side, all PowerBooks, plus the Centris and Quadra 650, Quadra 800, 840av, and Power Mac 7100 and 8100, will shut themselves off under software control. Unfortunately, the significantly less expensive Centris and Quadra 605, 610, and 660av computers don’t shut themselves off. Neither does the least expensive Power Macintosh, the 6100. If you believe that “the computer for the rest of us” deserves a place in the federal government, a ban on the least expensive Macs is not good.
But Power Key offers a way out. Equipped with a PowerKey, all these machines can be shut down under software control, allowing them all to be purchased and still meet Energy✭Star guidelines. Since a 6100 is roughly a thousand dollars less than the next least expensive Power Mac, there are tax dollars to be saved as well as energy.
There are also disasters to be averted. The Centris and Quadra 610 and 660av, plus the Power Mac 6100, have an unfortunately placed power button: near the floppy diskette drive opening. When you consider this fact, plus the fact that MS-DOS computers have manual eject floppy diskette drives, you have all the ingredients necessary for catastrophe: neophyte users who unintentionally turn the power off when they think they are ejecting a floppy diskette.
Installing a PowerKey requires just a couple minutes work. Plug everything you want powered up into the PowerKey (including the computer, of course), run the included ADB cable between the PowerKey and the Mac, install some software, and reboot. From that point on, the Mac can be started from the keyboard, and shut down from the Special menu — there is no need to use the power switch.
This apparently is such a frequent problem with these models that computer labs at businesses and schools have started posting signs saying: “Do Not Touch! This Is Not An Eject Button!” next to the power switch. The Mac’s reputation as user friendly suffers greatly when new users inadvertently kill their work.
But a Power Key eliminates any need to ever push the power switch. Many network managers, after installing a PowerKey, remove the Mac’s power switch to also remove the potential for disaster.
Long-Distant Computing
Sophisticated Circuits has another goodie designed for a different purpose, PowerKey Remote. As more and more people use telecommuting, the problem will become more prevalent: what do you do if you need something from your Mac, at home or work, and that Mac is turned off?
PowerKey Remote allows you to turn on a remote Macintosh. This consists of UnWake, a control panel with an obvious function and a hilarious name; a telephone cable; an ADB cable; and the PowerKey Remote. When everything is installed (see illustration), you can turn on a remote Mac by simply calling a telephone number; Power Key Remote starts up the Mac and, after a user-set idle time, UnWake turns the Mac off again.
Nothing else is required if you use a Mac II or a Centris, Quadra or Power Mac with a “soft power” switch. For those machines not so equipped, adding a PowerKey is the obvious answer.
PowerKey Remote works quite well. You can use it to restart a file server after a power failure; many bulletin board operators use it to restart their bulletin boards. You can also use it to turn on a fax server to send out faxes when the phone rates are low, or tum on a Mac and then grab some files via AppleTalk Remote Access. If a Mac is accidentally started via a wrong number, Un Wake will gracefully put the Mac back to sleep.
There are pitfalls, but they don’t appear to be the fault of Power Key. I’ve called up Macs to wake them up, but then been unable to reach the computers via AppleTalk Remote Access or Timbuktu. On investigation, some program on the remote Mac always prevented the connection; in one case, Public Utilities put up a dialog box saying the drive needed to be defragmented, and the dialog box prevented Timbuktu from working. In another case, someone (me) forgot to turn on file sharing on the remote Mac; it woke up without trouble, but wouldn’t share anything. Sigh.
Cheap Thrills
I’ve installed Power Key, without any problems, on the following: Mac SE/30, LC, LC II, Centris 610, Quadra 610, and Power Mac6100. I have no reason to believe it wouldn’t work on any other Mac with an ADB port. I’ve installed PowerKey Remote on a Mac Ilfx, IIsi, and Power Mac 7100, and the only problems I’ve seen were ones of my own making.
With a street price of less than $80 for PowerKey, and less than $35 for PowerKey Remote, these are budget-minded tools worth considering by every Mac user.
Sophisticated Circuits
19017 120th Avenue NE, Suite 106
Bothell, WA 98011
(206) 485-7979