2009-04-07: Dan Knight, Low End Mac’s publisher, informs us that today marks 12 years since he first posted some old Mac profiles on his personal website and started building Low End Mac.
Author Archives: Charles W Moore
2009 – I had an email Monday from my daughter, who is the current custom users of our old WallStreet PowerBook, telling me that she had succeeded in getting OS X 10.4 .11 Tiger installed on the venerable ‘Book. This was particularly interesting, because I had myself failed in several attempts over the years that I […]
2009 – I finally switched to using my new Unibody Aluminum MacBook for production – just over five weeks after it touched down here. That isn’t how I had expected things to unfold, but I ran into some unanticipated snags in the transition from my long-established and highly evolved workflow on my previous Macs to […]
2009 – Two weeks after it arrived, progress with my new Aluminum Unibody MacBook is proceeding slowly. I had imagined that I would have switched over to it for production by now, but things have not gone as smoothly as I had hoped – not, I hasten to add, due to any problems with the […]
2009 – My Apple Certified Refurbished (ACR) 13″ 2.0 GHz Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook arrived last Thursday afternoon, just a couple of hours short of a week after I ordered it, having been air-shuttled by FedEx back and forth across the continent twice, from Rancho Cordova, CA, to Memphis, TN, to Calgary, Alberta, to Halifax, […]
2009 – After equivocating for nearly three years about what hardware would become my vehicle for transitioning to the Macintel experience, I’ve finally made a decision. Last Thursday afternoon I ordered a 2.0 GHz Late 2008 Unibody Aluminum MacBook from Apple Canada – an Apple Certified Refurbished unit for Can$200 (14%) off the price of […]
Once upon a time, CPU upgrade vendor PowerLogix offered a 1 GHz G3 CPU upgrade for the Pismo PowerBook based on the IBM PowerPC 750GX CPU, doubling the clock speed of the fastest stock Pismo – and with a full megabyte of Level 2 (L2) cache also running at 1 GHz.
Last week fellow Low End Mac columnist Simon Royal posted a feature comparing nine Web browsers in the context of use on G3 and older G4 Macs. That’s a space I inhabit.
Open source high-end image-editing software is an unlikely concept when you think about it. For one thing, anyone who really needs an industrial strength image editing application for professional purposes can probably afford and will more often than not have the undisputed king-of-the-hill in bitmap graphics software, Adobe’s Photoshop CS, and most users – professional […]
Running system maintenance utilities is more often than not an act of faith – or at least hopeful optimism – with no really tangible evidence to indicate that it’s doing anything. However, once in a while it does fix an obvious problem. Some folks disparage running OS X system maintenance routines “routinely”, most conveniently executed […]
Questions I get asked fairly frequently are variations on the general theme of upgrading the operating systems of older Macs to more recent system versions. There is no all-purpose boilerplate answer. The appropriate system to use depends on variables like the speed of your machine, how much RAM you have, what you use the computer […]
The 17″ and high-end 15″ aluminum PowerBooks, aside from their modest (by today’s standards) 512 MB of standard RAM, are pretty lavishly equipped in standard trim. Even the “entry-level” 15-incher is no slouch. However, that doesn’t mean these ‘Books aren’t candidates for a bit of upgrading – especially now that we’re closing on three years […]
2008 – While it transcends the topic of computing by a vast margin, ocular vision is a key element of the computing interface. Being able to see the display is pretty elemental.
When Steve Jobs introduced the white dual-USB iBook in May 2001, he described it as “amazing”. I had to agree. In the context of the time, it was amazing that they were able to pack all that good PowerBook stuff into a package with about one-third less volume than the PowerBooks 5300 and 1400 – […]
Five years ago this week, on June 23, 2003 (although it seems longer somehow), Apple Introduced the G5 Power Mac, claiming it to be “fastest personal computer ever” and “first 64-bit personal computer”. Speculation soon began about the possibility of a G5 PowerBook. Not so much at first, since the G5 was launched as a power […]
Last week, Gadgets Page’s Michael Moncur posted Alternatives to Apple’s Aluminum Keyboard, a column about his search for a replacement for his iMac’s original keyboard, which had bitten the dust – more specifically, too many food crumbs from meals eaten at his workstation.
2007: The notebook computer is a sublime invention. I prefer working on notebooks even though mine are mostly used as desktop substitute machines, but road trips make you even more profoundly appreciate the genius of the laptop.
2007 – With all the rumors and speculation about a new subcompact MacBook Pro, which some have even suggested might be called the MacBook Pro Duo (I’m exceedingly doubtful about that), I thought it would be timely to take a retrospective look at the original subcompact Mac notebooks (aside from the PowerBook 100, which was […]
In July, I posted a column, Installing OS X 10.4 Tiger on DVD-Challenged Macs Using FireWire Target Disk Mode, describing how I had installed OS X 10.4 Tiger on my CD-ROM equipped iBook G3 by mounting it as an external hard drive from my DVD drive-equipped Pismo PowerBook via FireWire Target Disk Mode and choosing the […]
The new MacBook Pros and MacBooks run hot – almost hot enough to fry eggs. Indeed, Apple no longer advertises its portable computers as laptops, presumably fearing product liability lawsuits should someone singe their thighs.
2006 – Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger ships on DVD media, which is great if you have a Mac equipped with a DVD drive (as most of us do these days), since the entire set of installer files can be contained on one disc, eliminating the necessity of disc-swapping in the middle of the process. […]
TopXNotes is Tropical Software’s solution for creating, working with, and managing text-based notes – another entry in the increasingly crowded field of Classic Mac OS Note Pad replacements for OS X. The program supports to-do lists, Web account information, software serial numbers, and just about anything else you need to store – another spin on the theme […]
I’m a big fan of the optical mouse known simply as The Mouse. It was originally sold by MacMice and is now being marketed directly by its maker, the Chwang Yi Company.* By whatever name, it’s one of the the smoothest, slickest, most comfortable conventional computer mice I’ve ever used.
2006 – I broke in my fifth pair of Kodiak boots last winter. Kodiaks are not the cheapest work boots on the market by a long shot, but they offer superior comfort and last a long time, which in my books equates to true low end living value. A good analogy is Apple computers. They […]
PowerBook, iBook, iPod, and other portable computing is covered in The ‘Book Review. General Apple and Mac desktop news is covered in The Mac News Review. News about Apple’s transition to Intel CPUs and other Intel developments is covered in The Macintel Report.
PowerBook, iBook, iPod, and other portable computing is covered in The ‘Book Review. General Apple and Mac desktop news is covered in The Mac News Review. News about Apple’s transition to Intel CPUs and other Intel developments is covered in The Macintel Report.
PowerBook, iBook, iPod, and other portable computing is covered in The ‘Book Review. General Apple and Mac desktop news is covered in The Mac News Review. News about Apple’s transition to Intel CPUs and other Intel developments is covered in The Macintel Report.
PowerBook, iBook, iPod, and other portable computing is covered in The ‘Book Review, and general Apple and Mac desktop news is covered in The Mac News Review.
PowerBook, iBook, iPod, and other portable computing is covered in The ‘Book Review, and general Apple and Mac desktop news is covered in The Mac News Review.
PowerBook, iBook, iPod, and other portable computing is covered in The ‘Book Review, and general Apple and Mac desktop news is covered in The Mac News Review.
