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The Productive Mac

Yes, You Can Still Be Productive with the 20-Year-Old Mac Plus

- 2006.01.16

January 16th marks the 20th anniversary of the Mac Plus, the first Mac with a SCSI port, LocalTalk networking, and several other things. It's hard to believe this machine is twenty years old - the one I use still works fine, and at times I almost find myself using it more than my newer "compact Macs".

I guess other people must have felt the same way about it, because the Plus was one of the longest-lived Macs ever. It was introduced in January 1986 and discontinued in October 1990. It even had a minor role in Star Trek midway through it's life.

There were several reasons the Mac Plus was superior to the original Macintosh, expandability being one of them. I'm guessing this had something to do with Steve Jobs leaving the company. He never liked the idea of people messing around inside their computers. He also wanted people to buy a new Mac instead of upgrading their old one.

This shows with the original Macintosh. You needed a special tool to get inside, and once you were inside there really wasn't a lot you could do in terms of upgrades. The Mac Plus fixed this problem.

The Mac Plus had doubled the ROM of the Macintosh 512K, and it also doubled it's base RAM to 1 MB. It was expandable beyond that, up to 4 MB. It doesn't sound like much now, but in the early days of computing when software was smaller and wasn't as demanding, it was an adequate amount for most people.

Another great part of the new Macintosh Plus was the introduction of the SCSI port. This allowed for a large variety of external peripherals to be connected, such as hard drives, scanners, printers, and a lot of other stuff. Adopting the SCSI port was one of Apple's greatest innovations - we saw it on just about every Mac until 1998, when the original iMac was introduced.

The Mac Plus is certainly old, but that doesn't mean you can't be productive with one. They're fairly easy to find - I see them all the time at places like thrift stores and computer recycling centers. They're inexpensive, too. At the moving sale for our computer recycler, they had about five Mac Pluses that were priced at $1 each!

Once you get the computer, you should either make some boot disks or get an external hard drive. I prefer a hard drive - it's faster, and you can still use the internal floppy drive if you don't have a second external one.

There are all sorts of great uses for old Macs like the Plus. Many people use them as word processors. Some even hook them up to the Internet and do "text only" browsing with them. A great website to go for resources about this is Jag's House.

Recent Productive Mac articles

Why You Should Use Mac OS 7.6 to Get the Most Out of Vintage Macs, 01.29. Although you may be able to run OS 8 or 9 on your old Mac, you'll generally find better performance using Mac OS 7.6.
New homes for 3 WallStreet PowerBooks, 04.07. Although they may need a little restoration work, these are fine machines for using the classic Mac OS in the field.
Would you believe I picked up a decent old PowerBook for just $26?, 02.21. If you're looking for a low-cost, low-power laptop for light use, there are some real steals out there. Like this Powerbook 520c....
What's a good, inexpensive, useful, older Mac? The PowerBook 1400, 02.01. Relatively compact and not especially heavy, the PowerBook 1400 is a great low-cost way to run the classic Mac OS - and it's portable.
More in the Productive Mac index.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: Power Mac G5 Quad, Oct. 2005 - With two 2.5 GHz dual-core G5 CPUs, the G5 Quad was the most powerful PowerPC Mac ever and introduced PCI Express.
Group of the Day: Mac Network deals with all aspects of Mac networking.
November 21 in LEM history: 00: OS upgrades, downgrades - AltiVec vs. Pentium III - 01: Saved by the clones - Computer of the future - 02: Apple Education: Let's get to it - 03: Panther lets Macs and PCs work together, - Lombard SCSI bug - 05: 3 survivors from the 1970s - Real world battery life inadequate - Windows to Mac file transfer with Zip disks - $99 alternative to Microsoft Office - 06: Parallels 1.0 far more polished than beta

Recent Deals

Best eMac Deals, 11.18. Used 1 GHz Combo, $100; SuperDrive, $269; 1.25 GHz Combo, $119; SD, $319; 1.42 GHz Combo, $289; SD, $498.
Best Mac OS X 10.6 and Mac Box Set Deals, 11.18. "Snow Leopard", single user, $25; 5 users, $45; Mac Box Set, single user, $139; 5 users, $180; Server, $414. Shipping included.
Best Xserve Deals, 11.18. Used 1 GHz dual G4, $649; 2.3 dual G5, $795; 3.0 4-core Xeon, $1,899; refurb 2.26 4-core, $2,499; new, $2,888; refurb 8-core, $2,999; new, $3,449; more.
Best 15" MacBook Pro Deals, 11.17. Used 1.83 GHz, $750; 2.16, $800; 2.33, $900; refurb 2.4, $1,299; 2.53, $1,449; 2.66, $1,699; 2.8, $1,899; new 2.53, $1,579; 2.66, $1,799; more.
Best Power Mac G4 and AGP Video Card Deals, 11.17. Used 400 MHz, $50; 933 MHz, $80; 500 dual, $60; 867 dual, $90; 1 GHz dual, $150; 1.25 GHz dual, $225; 1.42 GHz, $499.
Best Mac OS X 10.5 Deals, 11.17. "Leopard" upgrade, $80; single user license, $135; 5 users, $173; Mac Box Set, 5 users, $230; Server, 10 users, $340; unlimited, $850. Shipping included.
Best Mac mini Deals, 11.16. Used 1.42 GHz G4 mini, $379; 1.66 GHz Core Solo, $419; 2.0 Core 2, $450; new 2.26 GHz nVidia, $580; 2.53 GHz, $769; Server, $990.
Best iBook G4 Deals, 11.16. Used 12" 1.07 GHz Combo, $210; 1.33 GHz, $298; 14" 1.33 GHz, $398; 1.42 GHz, $479; SuperDrive, $498.
Best iPod shuffle Deals, 11.16. Used 1 GB, $35; 4 GB, $65; refurb 1 GB, $39; 2 GB, $59; new 2 GB, $55, 4 GB, $75. New and refurb prices include shipping.
More deals in our archive.

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