Vintage Mac Living

30 Days of Old School Computing

No Real Hardships

- 2006.10.11

Hi everyone,

I imagine some of you have been wondering what happened to me and why I stopped writing in every few days to give an update on my progress.

Well, I was keeping a close eye on how many hits each articles was getting, and the numbers were discouragingly low. 300 or so the first day, 800-1,000 the first week. Those are very low numbers compared to my earlier articles, so I decided to hold off until the end of the 30 days to write another article.

I guess it was for the best, because I really didn't couldn't think of anything else to write - and I'm still having a hard time, because everything went so smoothly!

What can I say? Except for blogs, forums, pictures, video, and music, these old machine seem to be perfectly capable of doing just about any day-to-day task you can throw at them.

AIM works fine for instant messaging; WannaBe works great for web browsing; ClarisWorks, Word 5.1, and Excel 3 work fine for word processing and spreadsheets; Now Up-to-date works fine for my schedule (that's all I have ever used for my schedule book); and Now Contact is great for all of my contacts.

One thing that didn't work out: iCab. I tried running it for a few days, but I just couldn't take how slow it was. iCab is a great browser for the classic Mac OS, and I'm sure it would have been okay on a 68040 machine, but it was way too much for 25 MHz 68030 in my PowerBook 170.

But for the most part, every day of it was like any other day; nothing seemed all that different. That's why it was hard for me to write a progress report every few days.

I'm looking forward to powering on my G4 for the first time in a month. I'm sure it will be like turning on a brand new machine for the first time.

This has been a real adventure. 30 days is a long time to use nothing but the oldest in this day and age, but it was a real treat. And maybe sometime in the future I'll try using nothing but 68040 machines.

After all, I spent 30 days on nothing but black-and-white machines, so 30 days on 68040 machines should be a piece of cake.

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Recent Vintage Mac Living articles

What a waste! Some schools would rather store old computers than put them to use, 2007.09.12. Denver Public Schools is one example of a school district so ready to buy new computers that it has tens of thousands of old, usable computers sitting in storage.
My incredible $110 Lombard and Power Mac G4 deal, 2007.07.11. Sometimes pawn shops can be a great source for older Macs, such as turning up a Lombard PowerBook and a very upgraded Power Mac G4 Digital Audio for just $110!
Too stressed to even think about computers, 2007.05.16. "I've been so preoccupied that I haven't been able to think about computers, much less write about them."
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