My Pismo PowerBook
works. That's about the highest compliment you can give a computer -
"It works." Eleven years after the stopgap PowerBook hit the market,
placating demands for a yet-unreleased PowerBook G4, it still holds a
major place in Macintosh history on account of its sheer
upgradability.
Looking back, no Mac notebook has ever been quite such a Mac user's
friend, and I doubt any future Mac ever will be.
State of the Pismo
A little over three years after I bought it, after being in my
sister's care for too long, the Pismo is back with me again.
Unfortunately, my sister is never one to give up anything easily, so in
order to get the Pismo back, I had to trade her my recently-upgraded
iBook. This is merely a temporary loss, however, since experience has
proven that she will only want something as long as it is useful to her
- and especially if I really want it back. Given that she is a very
light computer user and that I don't really want my iBook back just
yet, it'll probably be back in my hands in no time.
In the meantime, I still have another iBook on which to work my
magi
But back to the Pismo. It had bad hinges when I bought it, but since
the screen will stay in place (with a little bit of play), it's
tolerable for for now. The two 6600 mAh batteries I bought for it have
since dropped into the sub-6000 mAh range (though I doubt they ever
achieved their advertised capacity anyway). And 768 MB of RAM, while
much better than 512 MB, isn't quite as good as 1 GB.
Zero-effort Improvements
Much has changed in the Mac world since I last used my Pismo (see
On the Road with a Pismo
and an iPad from July 2010), and some of that is for the better.
Believe it or not, HTML5 YouTube videos will play on the Pismo
natively, albeit at 240p resolution.
Just like on my iBook, Camino 2.0.7 is an amazingly fast
browser and can render relatively heavy sites (such as Facebook,
Engadget, Gizmodo, and so on) with ease on the 500 MHz G3. Major props
to the Camino developers, and I hope they continue to support Tiger
like Classilla has done with Mac OS
9!
The latest version of Thunderbird also works,
giving me fast and easy access to most of my email accounts (however my
iPad is still my main email device).
Plan of Action
While these few functions are working well already, I am still
planning to make several improvements to my Pismo. Cost can be an issue
with the Pismo, given the wide range of upgrades available, so I'm only
going to focus on a few areas where I would really like to see better
performance.
WiFi
802.11b WiFi is okay. Five times as fast 802.11g is fairly nice. And
802.11n would be awesome! I'm going to shoot for N with a PC
Card upgrade from
MacWireless.
Solid State Storage
Yes, you knew this was coming. But I'm going to put a little twist
on things - I'm going to install a 40 GB OWC
Mercury Pro Legacy SSD in my Pismo, but I'm keeping the 120 GB 5400
RPM Hitachi drive in an
expansion bay!
Remember, installing an SSD into the Pismo can raise its speed
beyond that of an SSD-equipped first generation MacBook Air. Oh
yes, speed is good - and so is battery life. Two 6600 mAh batteries
give the Pismo 10 hours, and since the power consumption on my iBook
was reduced by half when I upgraded it to solid state, I expect to see
similar results on the Pismo. Twenty hours of battery life, here I
come!
Hinge Repairs
Some places sell hinges for the Pismo for high-end prices. Others
sell them for almost nothing. I'm going to play it safe and shoot for
the middle of the road, wherein dwell more reputable dealers.
Optical
While I rarely use the Pismo's optical drive, I do burn disks quite
often, and to be able to do it from the Pismo would be very beneficial,
so I'm going to try to find a DVD±RW drive for it. This should
be interesting.
Memory
I'm going to replace the 256 MB card I've got with another 512 MB
card to boost the Pismo to its maximum 1 GB of RAM.
Here Goes Nothing
Like Charles Moore, I love my Pismo. It's been a dependable
workhorse for the time I've had it, and, while I've been enjoying a 15"
MacBook Pro Core i5 from my college newspaper, it just doesn't feel as
warm and personal as the sculptured black shape of the greatest
PowerBook. When you're a writer, the atmosphere matters, and the Pismo
sets up the perfect atmosphere for my writing. The longer I can keep my
Pismo relevant, the better. 
Austin Leeds is a Mac and iPad user - and a college student in Iowa.
