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I love your site! It's great for a Mac fanatic who uses a lot of
older hardware due to his status (lowly student).
I was brought up with computers. It was 1989, and I was three.
My dad decided I was old enough be taught to use his pride and joy,
a Commodore 64. He had upgraded it to 96 KB of RAM, dual 5.25"
floppies, and a color screen. I loved the fact that on the boot
screen I could hold down a key and it would make a little color
line. I loved the C64.
But this is a Mac article, so I digress. I think it was 1992, or
something like that - we got a Mac. It was a Mac Classic, factory upgraded to 2 MB of RAM. I didn't like it at
first, because the screen wasn't color. It was so small, too!
The mouse was cool, but what was the fun if it wasn't color?
After carefully considering this (carefully for a five-year-old), I
decided that the C64 was better. Then, I discovered drawing and
painting in ClarisWorks.
This was the original ClarisWorks; it came with the computer. I
was an instant convert. I didn't know that Apple was "cheaping out"
with redesigned SE hardware. I drew dump trucks - lots of 'em - and
printed them out on our ImageWriter.
I loved the Classic and got addicted to SpaceStation Pheta. I
was the Pheta champ at age six. That was the first Mac that I
used.
The family replaced the Classic with a 5200/75 when they were released in 1995. I
pleaded for the Classic, but it was given to one of my dad's needy
students. (He's a teacher.)
The first Mac I owned was a PowerBook
180 (I later sold it to a friend). I got it a little over a
year and a half ago. Not the color one, the black and white, 16
grays active matrix beauty. It weighed a bit, but the battery was
brand new, it had the max of 14 MB RAM and an internal modem
(14.4). I got it for $150 on
eBay.
It was great. I could turn off the backlight when I was working
outside and get three hours battery life. Since it was running
System 7.1, I could run it off a RAM disk. It felt faster (much
faster) than the current family Mac, an ancient (by now) Performa
5200/75. That thing was a piece
of crap. I sold that and got a 1400. I wanted ethernet and color (and the
ability to play Civilization).
The 1400, even though some people worship it, was a nightmare. I
got the 1400c/117, not realizing that
this model blew in terms of
speed. It also trashed three AC adapters in about nine months - all
just a little after the warranty expired. It fell off a table and
died. So much for 1400 durability.
Currently, I am the proud owner of a Power Mac 9600. It is my mess-around-with
machine, with 288 megs of RAM, two 4 GB hard drives, a CD
burner, a USB card, and a lot of junk. There is a PowerBook 2400 on the way too....
upgraded to 2 MB of RAM. I didn't like it at
first, because the screen wasn't color. It was so small, too!
that