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Happy birthday from one Aug 9ther to another!
Happy birthday.
So it looks like the Pismo is pretty much like every single laptop on the planet.... except for macs . . . interesting.
Why aren't all notebooks like this....
I'm writing this comment on a laptop that has been through 3 repairs, all done by myself. The drives are also replaceable. I hope that it lasts for another 5 years. I think I can keep it going.
I do like the Toshiba's, but i've repaired others that are not that hard to fix. I think that most of the laptops that get 'thrown' are just a battery issue. The cost for a new battery for this laptop is well over $150.
I do repair a lot of the electronics that die in our house.
Yes, you're right Traciatim. Every other laptop on the planet is just like his "antique" Mac. In another 10 years (without accounting for Moore's Law) all laptops will be like current Macs.That's the way it's always been.
Trevor: When you say you are running OS 10.4, I hope you mean you are running 10.4.11
I'm posting this on an old Inspiron 2200 that I got for free which was in a heap. It was missing memory, hard drive, battery, power adapter, and had a broken heat sink bracket as well as a desoldered power plug.
From spare parts I'd acquired over the last year or so, I completely rebuilt it in one day and bought a new battery for $30 on ebay that arrived by the end of the week. I now has a 1.4ghz Celeron M, 512mb of memory, a 4 hour battery, 80GiB hard drive, and runs XP as well as Slackware.
I wish I could do this for a loving because it'd be a lot cheaper and more friendly to the environment to fix these than to toss them... and you don't need a special laptop that's expandable. Except for the video cards that is. I wish they would hurry up and get an industry standard for laptop video cards. I think they like using it against you though. -_-
Our Pismo sits happily in the kitchen and is a recipe display system and ad hoc web browser. The only real upgrade its had (other than the operating system, to 10.4.11 or so) is a hard drive, and that has made all the difference. Old laptop hard drives used to be really loud, with a high-pitched whine...this is dead-silent.
I'm typing this on a nine year old Toshiba 2805 laptop. Its minuscule 6GB hard disk was upgraded to an expansive 20GB years ago, as was its paltry 64MB of RAM to a whopping 320MB, and its quirky ME OS to the more reliable XP. Still, you'd think its 650MHz CPU and 8MB VRAM would render it brain dead for internet surfing in 2009, but with help from a high-speed cable connection and the agile Opera 10 browser, Treehugger's pages snap onto the bright 15" 1024x768 LCD.
Actually, I keep Mr. T around primarily for its use in astronomical telescope controlling, because I need its old fashioned parallel and serial ports. I do most of my web surfing on a 13" Macbook or a 20" iMac. But I am really impressed with the circa 2000 Toshiba build quality.
"On the new Macbook, if the drive goes bad, it cannot be replaced by the owner since it is part of the machine. It cannot be upgraded either."
These are horribly vague statements. Which drive are you refering to, the harddrive or the optical drive?
The MacBook allows easy access to the harddrive by the owner as described at http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/MacBook-Unib... />
I got my first computer in 1983 and I've had computers continuously ever since.
In November I bought the new MacBook whose body is apparently machined from a single piece of aluminum.
It's the best computer I've ever owned!
I wonder if its durability - hardcore metal case, glass screen - won't allow me to keep it going for 10 years.
I can relate: my "WallStreet" PowerBook is still going strong and it's about the same age. I've never bothered with the heavy duty upgrades on it; just RAM and hard drive.
I have a number of old Macintosh laptops (3 in total), as well as a fairly ancient IBM ThinkPad 500 (a subnotebook). They are all great machines, all run well for what I use them for. But it is my ten year old iBook clamshell that just keeps plugging along. Currently, it runs OS X 10.2.8 and is used for writing, some light web work/cloud computing, and it is my daily radio/jukebox. Can't imagine life without it.
Modern cars are like modern Macs. The average user/driver cannot fix anything, beyond maybe changing the oil.
But there is a payoff. Back in the days when I could fix my cars, they needed a lot more fixing. Spark plugs every 10,000 miles, and engines were pretty well shot at 100,000 miles. Now the spark plugs last 100,000 miles and the engines are good til the rest of the car falls apart.
Hopefully the new Macs are as durable.
I found much of this article annoying.
The "green" movement existed and in my opinion was much stronger in the day of that PowerBook. In fact I believe Apple shipped that system in unbleached cardboard that was printed using soy based inks. Also the Geo Metro which got over ~48MPG was commonplace. The year 2000 was around the bend and there were laws on the books for cars in California to be zero polluting. I could go on and on but I'll end by pointing out that my Pismo works fine today as well.
Finally an article on TreeHugger that doesn't implore me to consume more and buy more crap.
hey trevor
i want to wish you a happy birthday.
i was amused at your constant tinkering with your laptop while we were on tour together.
tho you'll be amused when mine gets sent to china to be recycled and yours keeps chuggin' i guess
elam
I beg to differ! My Pismo runs webvideo and YouTube Just fine! I have an air card, but I also have from AT&T the laptop connect card, so my little pismo can get online anywhere, where there is a cell phone signal.
I really love my pismo, I need to learn way more about this little gem that I have!
I definitley agree that the less one consumes the better.
I still think back to the time that I used to have a Pismo. I loved that computer. My first Mac (that I bought, I used to work as a network admin before that). It ran so well, until the HD gave up and upgraded to an iBook.
Now I'm using a black MacBook and I've gotta say it's really frustrating. Everytime I switched to a newer mac has been annoying and they are becoming more and more fragile (I recently got mine all fixed up, just before the warantee was up, and it's starting to show the same issues again, just 4 months later, oh and the battery only lasts 2,5 hours, and I just bought it new 4 months ago). The only annoying thing is that many apps support Intel processors so I had to switch. Now that we are slowly go towards more online apps, that doesn't matter anymore though.
So I recently looked on ebay to see how much either the Pismos or the old iBook G4 are going for. I found a lot of 10 Pismos for only $50. What a deal. You will always have enough parts. I'm definitely sick of fragile computers
I just upgraded my PII laptop to a P4. I'm going to try to wait until winter until I turn it on again, I think I could light candles with that thing.
I have to point out that the new macbook pro that i bought just a month ago is also upgradable since the underside can be completely removed thus allowing DIY upgrade of RAM and HDD.
I have a PowerBook 1400 from 1997 that does just about everything I need a computer to do: word processing, internet, wifi, etc. Runs Debian Linux, too.
I fix old macs: http://www.ifixoldmacs.com/</p>
I play games on my PC. Since I became more environmentally aware over the years I kept my desktop for 6 years (all kinds of repairs). It was still running strong but couldn't handle recent games.
So I reinstalled it en let a friend 'adopt' it. And bought a used, formerly -top of the line- entertainment laptop 1,5 years old for about 510 euro (two previous owners.)
I think the world could save itself a lot of trouble by buying USED and by taking care of equipment (both soft- & hardware.)
Cudos
Bart
You mention that you are worried about upgrading to 10.4.11, but on my machine, this is the fastest, most stable system to date. When I watch videos on youtube, as long as it's not High quality enabled, the videos stream fine. The only thing that I have had issues with is hooking my firewire audio mixer to the Pismo (mackie u.420d) it crashes the machine.
The internal audio inputs are adequate and actually quite good, if you don't mind limitations of 16/44. Dvd's run perfect. Surfing the web, wired, wireless, and with a modem are painless. My girlfriend says she wants the 2nd one, once it's set up, as she has never felt a better keyboard. There are many quirks to this machine, and all GOOD quirks. It's easy to see why Apple, in terms of being a corporate entity, quickly abandoned the Pismo. It's superior in it's ease of use, and upgradeability, and that's a threat to market shares and annual spendatures on new computer stuff. This machine would be off the charts, if someone would offer a cheaper upgrade option for G4 upgrades, and the option to throw in higher res video. But as is, it's a 100% functional machine, for anything I do with computers (some things you need a bit more patience for , but it works) and that includes, doing ebay listings (with garagesale) using photoshop, freehand, illustrator, audio editing, ableton Live, reason, File hosting, video conferencing, DVD's, and more. If they don't get stupidly complex and heavy with web standards, I can easily see using this without a hitch for 10 more years, for various tasks with the wide range of tools available for the mac, both OS X and OS 9x. Don't bother with Ubuntu or such, as you just lose functionality of firewire and issues with video and other odd things, just not worth the pain. Make it 100% mac platform and it's dependable. I'll try to take pics and write more about how I tightened up my Pismo on my blog, or youtube (freqazoidiac)