LA Computer Company: Specials on AppleCare, iMac's, Apple Batteries and Apple A/C Adapters. Also Great prices on Used Apple Computers. Call 1-800-941-7654 Click Here.
OWC: Mercury Elite FW800/FW400/USB2/eSATA up to 2.0TB TOP-RATED Solutions offer High Performance, Reliable storage for all your data storage needs. 500GB $159.99, 750GB $199.99, 1.0TB from $299.99
My Turn is Low End Mac's column for reader-submitted
articles. It's your turn to share your thoughts on all things
Mac (or iPhone, iPod, etc.) and write for the Mac web. Email your
submission to Dan Knight
.
It all started with the purchase of a refurbished iceBook
three months ago. No longer would I have to retreat to my study to
check my emails - instead I could sit in the lounge, keeping half an
eye on the TV, and being part of the family at the same time. Other
work could happen on the kitchen table, with far more space for books
than my monitor and keyboard filled study desk ever allowed. And I
love Mac OS X!
Soon, I realised that my faithful Power Mac, a 6500/128
MB/6 GB model with a G3 upgrade, was no longer earning either its
keep or the space it took up. Selling it would bring in some useful
cash; waiting another year might make it almost valueless. It sold on
eBay,
the G3 upgrade reaching twice the price of the Power Mac itself!
But before that, the implications of this decision had started to
be realised. What about my SCSI CD-writer, my SCSI scanner, and my
software, such as the TextBridge Pro character recognition package,
which I don't use enough to justify replacement by Mac OS X
compatible packages on the iBook?
The answer was obvious - use one of the Colour
Classics that I "play" with for my recreation! The Power
Colour Classic, with
a 275 MHz 6500 logic board, had already been sold to help finance the
iBook purchase. My "Taco"
project to put a G3 logic board in an LCD-equipped CC is a few
months from completion, and another
Colour Classic has a slot-load CD drive in place of the floppy,
whereas I need a floppy drive to read discs from my elderly Sony
Mavica camera.
That left my most recently acquired CC - not quite "bog
standard," but benefiting from an increasingly common pair of CC
upgrades, a screen upgrade to 640 x 480, and the logic board from an
LC 575, with a 33 MHz 68040
rather than the CC's 16 MHz 68030. This particular "Mystic," as the
575-upgraded CC is called, has been overclocked to 43 MHz and has 68
MB of RAM. This makes it one of the fastest possible CCs, short of
the
full "Takky" PowerCC upgrade.
All this is a well-worn path for Colour Classic fans - what was
new ground for me was trying to use it as my only desktop Mac.
What has amazed me in the last couple of weeks is just how much
serious work can be done with a 10 year old pre-PowerPC Mac.
CD writing? The Toast software that came with my SCSI CD-writer is
68K compatible. I installed it. I wondered if trying to burn a CD on
such a slow machine would simply produce some shiny coasters. I
needn't have worried; in fact the Mystic can throw data at the 4x
writer as fast as it can write it!
Likewise, the Agfa scanner drivers from the mid 1990s run fine on
a 68K Mac, as does Photoshop 4LE, as does TextBridge Pro, as does
Quark Xpress 3.3.
Once a year, I freelance for a British weekly church newspaper,
supporting its coverage of the national Methodist Church Conference,
and providing the hardware for the Conference end of a production
system that emails copy in Word (spit!) format to the London office
for page make-up and receives back Quark files for checking before
printing. In the past, I've lugged a 6500 with 17" screen or
"borrowed" my children's 5500.
Neither was a pleasure to carry up the numerous flights of steps to
the rooms usually allocated to the press in British Town Halls.
This year, the CC will slip into its padded case and provide very
similar functionality, complete with a modem in the Comm Slot and an
ethernet card in the PDS slot, giving connectivity to printers and
other Macs. (During the day, the iBook is in the Conference with me,
for reporting, and the CC will be the email station for the reporting
team. On the long night before printing, the 1024 x 768 display on
the iBook will come to our aid for Quark page checking. One year,
dawn was breaking before the last page was "signed off," but that's
another story!)
Of course, Mac OS X, iMovie, and the rest of the digital-hub
technology revolution is beyond this modestly upgraded machine. But
its footprint remains unmatched short of a G4 Cube or G4 iMac - and
my experiences of the past two weeks have taught me that Colour
Classics can be far more than material for upgrade projects.
Now a CC sits where a 6500 and 17" screen once resided. The
iceBook is alongside, and between them the two Macs - ancient and
modern - provide me with a very flexible and powerful working
environment.
When Stuart Bell is not playing with his new iBook or his collection
of compact Macs, he is a minister in the British Methodist
Church.
Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.
Recent My Turn articles
Using Low End Macs for Internet Radio, 08.18.
When the local public radio station moved classical music to HD radio, it was time to find another way to listen. An old iMac with iTunes solved the problem.
'That's Not a Computer', 07.30.
Salvaging a broken PowerBook by turning it into a desktop computer.
My 4 favorite PowerBooks, 05.28.
The PowerBook 150 has a big screen for a vintage PowerBook, the 165c has color, the 100 is diminutive, and Lombard has USB and a great keyboard.
Mac of the Day: Centris 650, Feb. 1993 - The replacement for the Quadra 700 has room for an internal CD-ROM.
List of the Day: Old Mac MP covers 604-based multiprocessor Macs and clones.
September 7 in LEM history: 98: Banner exchanges - 00: Tips from the Mac manager - Getting a Mac job - 01: Apple and the gray market - Repositioning the 'Books - 04: Tray loading iMac a good choice for OS X? - Pismo CPU upgrades - 06: Mac mini value equation - Setting up a Mac Classic II - Putting the Intel transition in perspective - 07: Region free DVD viewing, - My Newton - Solving Mac disk and hardware problems - 2 apps every MacBook should have
Listen to Just the Music with the V-Moda Vibe Earbuds, Tommy Thomas, Welcome to Macintosh, 09.05.
Well built, the noise canceling earbuds will let you hear all the nuances of your music without letting through background noise.
Best iPod touch Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 09.05.
Refurb 8 GB, $199; new, $284; refurb 16 GB, $299; new, $370; refurb 32 GB, $399; new, $453.
Best 15" MacBook Pro Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 09.05.
Used 1.83 GHz Core Duo, $999; 2.16, $1,125; new, 2.2, $1,450 after rebate; refurb 2.4, $1,699; 2.5, $1,999; 2.6 Santa Rosa, $1,849; rebates on new.
Best iMac G4 Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 09.05.
Used 15" 700 MHz CD-RW, $279; 800 Combo, $300; 1 GHz $390; 17" 800 MHz SD, $439; 1.25 GHz, $449; 20", $569.
Tomorrow's Solid State Drives and Notebooks, Dan Knight, Mac Musings, 09.04.
Flash drives are great but have some shortcomings. Some thoughts on building better SSDs and notebooks to use them.
Best Mac mini Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 09.04.
Used 1.25 GHz G4 SD, $549; 1.42 Combo, $409; new 1.83 Core2 Combo, $569 after rebate; 2.0 SD, $769 after rebate.
Best 12" PowerBook G4 Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 09.04.
Used 867 MHz Combo, no APX, $490; 1 GHz, $550; SuperDrive, $625; 1.5 GHz w/o APX, $660; w/APX, $675.
Best 17" PowerBook G4 Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 09.04.
Used 1 GHz, $779; 1.33 GHz, $799; 1.5 GHz, $859; 1.67 GHz, $910.
11 Mac Browsers Compared, Simon Royal, Mac Spectrum, 09.03.
The latest versions of Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Shiira, iCab, Radon, Firefox, Netscape Navigator, SeaMonkey, Flock, and Camino tested in Leopard.
Best eMac Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 09.03.
Used 700 MHz Combo, $120; 1.25 GHz SuperDrive, $150; 1.42 GHz, $349.
Best Mac OS X 10.5 'Leopard' Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 09.03.
Mac OS X 10.5, single user, $99; 5 users, $140; 10.5 Server, 10 users, $395; unlimited, $850.
Best MacBook Air Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 09.03.
Refurb 1.6 HD, $1,499; new, $1,690 after rebate; refurb 1.8, $1,699; new, $1,919 a/r; refurb 1.6 SSD, $2,099; new, $2,294 a/r; refurb 1.8, $2,299; new, $2,400 a/r.
Psystar Strikes Back, Countersues Apple, Frank Fox, Stop the Noiz, 09.03.
Psystar is trying to paint Apple as a monopoly and force it to license the Mac OS.
All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For
price quotes and advertising information, please contact
at BackBeat Media
(646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.
Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer
5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We
recommend Firefox
for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more
secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox
than any other browser.
with
a 275 MHz 6500 logic board, had already been sold to help finance the
iBook purchase. My 
