MacPrices.net

Don't get me wrong. I already have a laptop, and it's one of the best that Apple has ever made in my user experience as well as word on the web. I bought the machine secondhand in early 2002, but in very good condition. This PowerBook model was released in February 2000, code-named "Pismo" with a sleek black design and expansion capabilities galore. It's the Mac "book" I've been using for the past five years. The original black Mac notebook/laptop.

(For another person's take on their own PowerBook "Pismo" who happens to be a fellow columnist on this site, check out Charles W. Moore's memoirs on his five years with the original black Mac. I wonder if he bought it from the same guy I got it from? He did have two available)

My PowerBook has done an outstanding job over the years, and still functions quite well, even though I'm not using it anymore. It used to even be the computer I worked with to do major video editing projects under iMovie (at 400 MHz speed) before I moved over to an 867 MHz iMac G4, and then finally to my own dual 1.42 GHz PowerMac G4.

Makes you wonder what I was doing, what we were all doing, before the current top-of-the-line professional models came along, like PowerMac G5s and Mac Pros. Heck, speaking of Pro, the original Final Cut Pro used to be optimized for this particular PowerBook model, the Pismo 2000. The ad for the machine had a professional Canon DV camera tethered to the laptop with Final Cut Pro on the screen! "Edit Like a Pro."

It was roughly five years ago when I came across this deal/steal of our life (though the next one after this will reign supreme!). An acquaintance who knew I loved Macs asked me if I was interested in buying a slightly used iBook since his friend needed the money to use on a trip to Vegas, and his Mac wasn't being used too much and it was the perfect way to get instant cash.

When I was first approached about whether I was interested in buying the laptop, I was told it was an "iBook" computer and it was being sold for $500. I was interested of course and told him to bring it on over. When the laptop finally arrived for a preview inspection (it was really nice of the guy to let me look it over before buying it, the friend of my acquaintance), boy was I surprised. First, I didn't recognize it. Second, it wasn't white or "fruit-flavored."

Third? Because, the darn computer wasn't even an iBook.

What I was presented with was not the white/silver laptop computer (or even the decommissioned blue and white one that I was hoping it might possibly be) I had pictured in my head. It was black, and it was a...? PowerBook! And I was immediately sold not just for its asking price, but for its looks and better features than the new iBook that was being sold at the time.

It was after all, a PowerBook, and a specific model I'd always dreamed of but knew I'd never get my hands on at the price it was going for at retail. For a computer that was originally sold for $2,499, and still going for half that on eBay at the time, I was not going to let this one go.

It was a 400 MHz machine, with Airport, DVD player, battery, 512 MB of memory, and a 6 GB hard drive. That didn't last long. Fast forwarding here, I eventually upgraded it to the max, with a CD-RW/DVD drive, a ZIP drive, a floppy disk drive, another battery, 30 GB hard drive (then to a 60 GB), 1 GB of memory, and finally, a PowerLogix 900 MHz G3 processor upgrade.

All in all, I think I invested an additional $1000 into that tough laptop, still totaling at least half of what I would've paid--and never would have been able to pay at the time--had I bought it new. And in the end, I had a more beefed up PowerBook too. (That's one thing I miss about the 'books that came after that, the easy-to-upgrade yourself factor, and the endless possibilities available to upgrade your computer)

There was nothing wrong with it, and I installed almost every version of Mac OS X up until Tiger. I didn't notice any slowdowns from using it, especially since I had that upgraded processor underneath its hood. But it was showing signs of age in the sense I couldn't really do things beyond simple tasks like e-mail, typing, and Photoshop 5.0 in Classic mode. It suited me well, after all, my main workhorse machine was a dual PowerMac G4.

But, I wanted to be able to do things that I did on my G4 tower, on my laptop at similar speeds.

So all last year, I fought with myself, mind and wallet, over getting a new "laptop." I recently bought that new Apple notebook--after having spent a good year and a half debating which one I should get, considering various factors, and weighing the many options out there--and what I finally settled on is not what one would expect, considering my needs.

"Then took the other, as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim..."

go to: 1 | 2 | next page