I’m a MacHead!
Saturday
Sep 2, 2006
Pictures speak louder than words.
The PowerBook Pismo is teh cool!
The Pismo is the last G3-based portable that Apple has official OS X Tiger support for. It also seems to be a favorite among the folks at LowEndMac (serious MacHeads, if you ask me), because of its expandability (two expansion bays!), style (black is teh cool!), and durability (sturdier than ding- and dent-prone TiBooks). You could even upgrade the Pismo to a 550 MHz PowerPC G4! And battery life could be extended to 10 hours if you load up both bays with battery packs.
This is a writer’s laptop! (Remember Sex and the City‘s Carrie?)
J. Angelo Racoma is a technology journalist and blogger. See more of his blog posts here at racoma.com.ph, commentaries at racoma.net, and Twitter feed at @jangelo.Share:
Comments
Noemi
September 3rd, 2006 at 4:24 pm
I love the Mac too. The problem is Globe Visibility or PLDT WeRoam won’t work with our mac
kid
September 4th, 2006 at 7:28 pm
their current pc cards won’t work with macs but both services should. you just need an extra phone with EDGE/GPRS capability that can connect to your mac (via bluetooth or usb cable)
J. Angelo Racoma
September 4th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
Hmm. I guess I should use the Compaq for that, then. But it’s too bad we didn’t get a trial of Visibility.
curious
September 5th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
Do you still use that Mac more than the other laptop?
Any technical difficulties with the Mac laptop because of its age (and you can still install tiger on it??)
J. Angelo Racoma
September 5th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Hmm. Actually, I just got the Mac last Wednesday. Since then, I’ve been using it more than the V2000. Perhaps because of the novelty of it, or maybe it’s because I like OS X. Yes, I already installed Tiger and updated it to 10.4.7. It actually came with 10.1.4 when I got it, so it was very limited (no WiFi drivers, etc.) Some people over “LowEndMac”:http://lowendmac.com say that the best cat for the Pismo is the Panther, but I’m not seeing any speed problems with Tiger.
Of course, I’ve upgraded it to 512MB RAM. Theoretically you can plug in two 1GB sticks to make it 2 Gigs, but that’s already expensive. Also, you can upgrade the CPU to a 550 MHz G4. The DVD drive can also be upgraded to any standard tray-loading laptop Combo drive (w/ CD burner) or even a lightscribe/dual layer DVD burner.
Some gripes: Flash/web videos tend to skip frames, but DVDs play well. Also, the unit freezes when it goes to sleep while the Cardbus WiFi card is plugged in and running. Other than that, OS X Tiger is one great cat on the Pismo.
Check out my bLaptops post for the complete story.
Corsarius
September 6th, 2006 at 2:39 am
Black Mac! ::envious::
I always wanted a black unit, so i don’t know how i ended up with my white laptop. But Corsarify’s still sexy, heh.
Btw, what’s the name of the Pismo? hehe.
J. Angelo Racoma
September 9th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
No more freezing when going to sleep! I plugged in a Linksys WRT54G cardbus (revision 3) and OS X detects it as an Airport Extreme card–same Broadcom chipset, after all.
@Corsarius, no name yet! Any suggestions?
J. Angelo Racoma
September 9th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
Maybe “Lisa” would be a good name, in honor of the old LISA system (the Mac’s pseudo-precursor).