Collection Spotlight
Leo LeBron was born and raised in Michigan. He grew up on PCs at
home and Macs at school. He says, "I remember using the old compact Macs all the way up to
the 5th grade. Then, in 1998, my school got dozens of shiny new
Bondi Blue iMacs. Those were an
exciting experience - and made me regret going home every day to my
father's old 486.
"When I was in the 10th grade, I became facinated by the Apple
IIes my biology teacher's used as classroom machines. This was back
in 2003/04. I was interested in both what the machines could do and
that they still worked in the early part of the 21st century, over
a decade after the newest ones were sold.
"He then offered me my first Mac, a Macintosh Plus, and from there I have
amassed a collection of over two dozen Macs - and growing.
"In this column, I'll dig through my collection of low end Macs
and give my take on each one, as well as write about what I have
them doing today and crazy things I've done to them in the past.
That includes everything from turning them into dedicated gaming
servers to running Linux as a primary OS.
"Stick around, it is going to be one interesting ride for both
of us."
- PowerBook
180 reincarnated, 2009.09.01. The dead PB 180 had once been king of
the PowerBook line. Thanks to a PowerBook 165 and some part swaps, it
was brought back to life.
- Apple's largely
forgotten QuickTake 150 digital camera, 2009.08.10. Apple was the
first to market with a sub-$1,000 digital camera, the fixed focus, VGA
resolution, Mac- and PC-compatible QuickTake line.
- Beige Power Mac
G3: Maximum power then, great value now, 2009.08.03. The world's
most powerful personal computer when it was introduced in November
1997, the beige G3 still has a lot to offer anyone looking for a very
low cost, powerful Mac.
- The enduring
value of the Pismo PowerBook, 2009.07.27. The most expandable G3
PowerBook ever is nealy 10 years old, yet it remains a great value for
someone looking for an affordable field computer.
- The death, salvage,
and resurrection of old Macs, 2009.07.20. Over the past two years,
several Macs have died or been retired, often donating parts to more
modern replacements.
- The incredible transforming
PowerBook 1400, 2007.11.07. You can change the look of the PB 1400
with its BookCover, upgrade RAM to 64 MB, add a video card, upgrade to
G3, boot from flash memory, and more.
- Why the Blue and White G3 is
the workhorse of the Mac world, 2007.10.26. Introduced in January
1999, the blue and white Power Mac G3 was powerful, expandable, and
supported all the way through Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger'.
- 8 MHz forever? Apple's
Macintosh Classic was no faster than the first Mac, 2007.09.26. A
successor to the 1986 Mac Plus and 1987 Mac SE, the 1990 Mac Classic
was slow, limited, and barely enough for basic tasks like writing.
- AppleWorks may be discontinued,
but it's far from dead, 2007.09.12. AppleWorks combined word
processing, spreadsheets, and more in a single lightweight app, giving
many users all the tools they needed.
- PowerBook 540c: Still the king
of notebook computers, 2007.09.04. The PowerBook 500 family
introduced a curvy new design, the trackpad, intelligent NiMH
batteries, drive bays, PCMCIA expansion, and 16-bit stereo sound to the
world of notebook computers.
- Adium: One instant
messenger to rule them all, 2007.08.22. Adium can replace all
of your Instant Messenger clients with a single program and handle
all of your threads in a single tabbed window.
- PowerBook 100: How Sony
perfectly miniaturized the 16 pound Macintosh Portable,
2007.08.08. The PowerBook has the same speed, power, memory
capacity, hard drive, and screen resolution at the Mac Portable,
but it weighed less than one-third as much.
- 2 pizza box Macs: An
original LC and an LC III, 2007.08.01. Pushing an LC III to the
limit and dealing with a dead Macintosh LC.
- My first Mac, a Plus,
shocked me, 2007.07.18. Going from the world of Windows PCs to
a floppy-based Mac Plus provided several pleasant surprises, like
booting in just 30 seconds.
- Jaguar on WallStreet: Not
as slow as you might think!, 2007.07.11. A 233 MHz PowerBook G3
with 192 MB of RAM and a new hard drive performs quite comfortably
with Mac OS X 10.2.x.
