We got my daughter, Deirdre, away for her freshman year of
university on the weekend, with a bung-full Toyota Corolla load of
stuff, including two low-end PowerBooks - a 5300 and a 1400cs.
The 5300 is a well-known quantity, being the machine I used as my
main workhorse from 1996 to 1999. It has served Deirdre since as her
high school computer. The 1400, which I
wrote about in this space when we purchased it last spring, has
been working well all summer, and is now Deirdre's number one computer,
with the 
faithful old 5300 in reserve. She
has been enjoying the bigger color screen, after three-and-a-half years
of the little 9.5" grayscale display on the 5300.
The 1400 is a wee bit faster, too, with its 117 MHz 603e CPU, versus
the 100 MHz unit in the 5300. I had originally installed OS 9.1 when we
got the 1400 in May, but its performance was a bit sluggish on the old
machine, so I downgraded to OS 8.5.1 in July. OS 8.6 might be ideal
system for this machine, but my 8.6 upgrade disk images, stored on a
Zip disk, seem to have become corrupted, so OS 8.5.1 it remains.
One of the biggest hardships with either of these is that startup
takes forever, but once they are up and running, either handles Nisus
Writer and Eudora Light, the two applications Deirdre uses most, quite
satisfactorily.
It will be interesting to see how the 1400 performs on the broadband
Internet hookup in her dorm residence. She won't know for a few days yet, until the res-net folks
get her connected. The res-net issue actually involved a bit of a
scramble at the last minute.
Deirdre had thought she might just get a dialup Internet
account, but it turned out that is against university regulations
through their phone system. However, neither of her PowerBooks has
built in ethernet, and she had no ethernet PC Card. I contacted our
nearest Apple dealer (150 miles away) and was told that they had no
ethernet PC Cards in stock, but an Asante unit could be ordered in for
about Can$99. Yikes; that's nearly half what we paid for the
computer!
However, one of my son's coworkers had a Motorola Mariner
ethernet/33.6 kbps modem combo card that he was willing to part with
for $30, and for good measure he threw in an Asante ethernet card (with
its connector dongle missing) in the bargain. If Deirdre can find a
replacement dongle, she can have both PowerBooks ethernetted. That deal
involved a last-minute 130 mile round trip on Friday afternoon to pick
up the cards, but it seemed like the ideal solution.
Before Deirdre left, I also installed the latest version of Netscape
Communicator (4.8) for browsing purposes, along with iCab 2.8.1. iCab
is faster, but Netscape (or IE) is required for her university
website.
The old bargain-basement 1400cs also plays prerecorded music CDs and
MP3s satisfactorily using the Apple Audio CD player and QuickTime 3
software that installed with OS 8.5.1. Unfortunately, the Audio CD
player seems to choke on burned CD-Rs, which was a disappointment. The
CD-Rs show up on the Desktop, but the CD software hangs when you try to
play songs.
That relatively minor issue aside, these two old PowerBooks, along
with Deirdre's ten dollar used StyleWriter II printer (it works
perfectly), should get her started on her university career
satisfactorily. Unfortunately, her school's IT services department only
supports PCs, so she is on her own on that score.
Deirdre would like to have a faster computer, of course, and is
eyeing deals on PowerBook
3400s. The battery in the 1400 is not up to much, so it will likely
be relegated to desktop substitute status, while the old 5300 is
pressed into service for portable computing. Its original 1996 battery
is still hanging in fine!
