Old PowerBooks can be a lot more useful than you might expect. Sure,
they may not run recent games and high-end video editing software like
Final Cut Pro, but if you just do a little Googling, you'll find lots
of nice apps to make your oldie just as useful as a new MacBook.
I am a big fan of classic Apple notebooks, because they have a nice,
sturdy design and are also very good word processing machines. When I
first got my 1994 PowerBook 150, I
was just using it occasionally to do some word processing for school in
ClarisWorks.
But all of a sudden, things changed. I read the 30 Days on Vintage Macs articles here on Low
End Mac, and I was stunned at how the author could use his old Macs for
so many of his normal tasks that were usually performed on a modern
computer.
I decided to do the same thing.
My
PowerBook 150 already had 8 MB of RAM and a 250 MB hard drive, but the
battery was done for. So I got a new one off
eBay, and suddenly my little Mac was useful on the go again. But I
still wanted to do more with it.
I found my old ImageWriter printer
and hooked it up. It worked fine. I made sure to install System 7.5 on the Mac, and I also gave it the
iCab web browser and some old version of
Eudora for mail. It was a little slow in iCab, but Eudora was quite
fast.
I also made a small LocalTalk network between it and my "Pizza Box" Quadra 610. It worked just fine, and I
was able to share the printer and the Internet connection, too.
The 150 is a great machine. Unlike most people, one thing I like
about it is the screen. My PowerBook is in very good shape, and the
screen is among the most crisp and nice b&w screens I have ever
seen on a laptop - way better than my old PowerBook 160. Plus, the screen is
big. It offers a resolution of 640x 480 - much better than other
old PowerBooks with 640 x 400 black and white screens.
In conclusion, the PowerBook 150 is a great machine that makes a
nice networking buddy to my Quadra and PowerBook 165c (which I rarely use these
days - the trackball broke).
Forward Into the Past
But my PowerBook 150 adventure isn't over yet. On Thursday, March
27, I will pick up a Classic II and two PowerBook 100s. I hope to make a nice
little vintage Mac network with the Quadra being the server, the
Classic being my office machine, and the 150 being my laptop of choice
for trips. Finally, my PowerBook 100 will most likely serve as a
compact writing machine.
Count on me to get you another article as soon as the 100s and the
Classic II are set up.
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