Recycled Computing

Blackbird MacBook

- 2012.01.03

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Short link: http://bit.ly/z6pfMb

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

The Intel age has arrived here in the backwoods of New England.

My problems with my 12" PowerBook G4 have been documented (see Death of a PowerBook: Time to Go Intel?) and, as a result, I ordered a used black 13.3" MacBook from Wegener Media. It arrived before Christmas, but I was forbidden by Mrs. Claus to even look at my new computer until Christmas morning.

My cool looking 13.3" black MacBook.

I spent Christmas doing the normal Christmas things and waited until the next day to recover my data from my PowerBook and get it on the MacBook. Normally, I would use my Time Machine, Apple's backup application, to restore to the MacBook, but I had been in the process of updating my contacts when the PowerBook crashed, so I wanted to migrate the data from the PowerBook to my new MacBook.

Taking apart the PowerBook G4.

The PowerBook was dead, however, so I had to take apart the PowerBook to remove the hard drive. Off comes the keyboard and the top plate, and there is the hard drive.

Hard drive and other parts inside the PowerBook G4
Inside the PowerBook G4.

Fortunately, I have a hard drive enclosure and was able to place the PowerBook drive in it. I then attached it to the MacBook and ran Migration Assistant to transfer my preferences, files and applications to the MacBook.

Two notebook drives and an enclosure.

I wasn't done, of course. I had to attach my Time Capsule drive and back up the MacBook and update my PowerPC applications to Intel ones. This will probably be an ongoing process as I go to use old applications and discover they are PowerPC instead of Intel.

I like my new computer - it has a matte screen, replaceable battery, replaceable hard drive, and easy to update memory. It can also run the new OS X 10.7 Lion operating system. I'm not ready to move to it yet, but it's nice to be able to. I'm running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and updating my apps to Intel in anticipation of getting Lion down the road.

The big thing that I like about the MacBook is that it has a black finish. Why? Because I like owning a computer that is different that everyone else's- and there weren't that many black MacBooks.

Pismo PowerBook G3, 12-inch PowerBook G4, and 13.3-inch black MacBook
Pismo PowerBook G3, 12" PowerBook G4, and 13.3" black MacBook.

Nothing is perfect. I need to upgrade the RAM, and I need to get ready to make an upgrade from AppleWorks to Pages. That means that I will have to convert all my old AppleWorks files from .cwk to .doc files.

Progress is nice, but not always easy.

Still, the black MacBook is real cool looking.

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More in the Recycled Computing index.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: PowerBook 500 Series, introduced 1994.05.16. 'Blackbird' includes a 25 to 33 MHz 68040 along with smart batteries and grayscale or color displays.
May 16 in LEM history: 98: iMac reconsidered - 01: The exclusivist Mac - Cubed - Troubleshooting - 02: SE/30 catharsis - Microsoft free - 03: SCSI and OS X on a beige G3 - 05: Failures: Apple III and Lisa - Bigger, faster, more - 06: MacBook - PowerBook 3400 still useful - 07: 3 GB in a MacBook - 08: Mac Pro beats HP and Dell - Limited USB power in Santa Rosa Macs
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