Macopinion

The Road Warrior Mailbag - December 17, 2007

Pismo and Leopard
Evaluating Fair Market Value
"Grandson of Pismo” I'LL Take one, 2 or 3 of Them
Scrutinizing The Macworld Expo Apple Subnotebook Rumors

___

Pismo and Leopard

Agree with all that's been said about the Pismo - it's still a great machine after all these years. Of course it probably won't run Leopard ( I haven't dared to try) and of course year by year it's slower than the latest models - the graphics card is also showing it's age.

Looking at the alternatives, while a new MacBook Pro would ring me up to the leading edge performancewise, I have a hard time justifying a spend of close to $2,000. If only the graphics were upgradeable and the processor could be 'dual cored'.

Cheers
Les

___

Hi Les;

If only......

Actually though, we've heard of several successful Leopard installs on Pismos. It can be done via Target Disk Mode from a supported machine, or by spoofing the firmware. You can find out more about the latter here:
http://lowendmac.com/osx/leopard/openfirmware.html

I can't say how well Leopard works on the Pismo. I may eventually give it a whirl, but I'm going to waith untill Leopard is a lot more debugged than it is so far.

Charles

***

Evaluating Fair Market Value

From Adam

Hello again Mr. Moore!

I will make this one quick, I just wanted to gauge your opinion on the situation.

So I find myself in another quandary as far as machines go. If you remember a few months back when my Pismo gave out, I came about a good deal on an iBook G4 - maxed ram, Airport extreme, combodrive, and a new battery for $350. While I've been reasonably happy with the machine (even under Leopard), I'm wishing the old Pismo had held out a while longer before surrendering to the ages.

The opportunity has now presented itself for me to acquire a 15" 1.5GHz Aluminum PowerBook G4 with 2GB(!) of RAM, 80-gig HD, superdrive, Airport Extreme, Bluetooth, and a battery of unknown condition for $500.

What do you think of this deal?

I've always been bad at evaluating fair market value, comparative cost analysis, and the like... Assuming I could break even, or at least come close to it unloading the iBook, do you think this deal would be worth it? If it were you would you go ahead and pull the trigger on it or would you suggest just milking the iBook for all I can while saving my pennies for one of those new-fangled Macintels?

I figure you are the best person to ask, having a machine fairly close to the specs of the PB in question. How much longer do you feel you will be comfortable using your "Big Al" before making the big switch? I fully expect support for G4s, if not all PowerPCs to be dropped come 10.6, but if Apple continues with their release trends of the past few years, that shouldn't be for another 3 years or so.

Needless to say, I'm on the fence... As always, any advice/comments/suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Best Wishes,
Adam

___

Hi Adam;

What do I think? If you don't want it, I'l buy it!

Five hundred bucks for a 1.5 GHz aluminum PowerBook with maxed-out RAM is a great price, provided the machine is in decent condition. The only question I have is "if it seems too good to be true...." caveat emptor.

My 1.33 GHz AlBook has been a rock of dependability since I bought it. Great machine! It's made me ambivalent about upgrading to a MacIntel.

Charles

***

"Grandson of Pismo” I'LL Take one, 2 or 3 of Them

From Konrad

Hi Charles,

I’m with you all the way on the “Grandson of Pismo” I’ll take 1, 2, or maybe 3 of them, with as much horsepower as they’d come with, as that would future proof me for a while, maybe 5 to 8 years or is that being too optimistic.

Maybe not as I’m still running 2 Pismos, a Lombard, and a WallStreet, which all started with the Lombard I bought new in may 1999 as soon as it was released, after ogling over the WallStreets for  some time thinking do I or don’t I get one, back when I was a PowerBook Duo user, and then Apple made it sleeker, faster, lighter and cheaper, well I was SOLD and I have not looked back since.

I later picked up a second hand WallStreet for my wife and then a Pismo for me which has become another home machine and then another Pismo for me, as I reflect on this it’s clear I have Pismo-Envy or Pismo-itis or something, NO I’ve just got a DAMN good computer and I’m not letting go of it. (Hi my name is Konrad and I’m a Pismo-holic)

I have just completed another one of many upgrades on my main Pismo being another new hard drive which is a Seagate 100GB 7200rpm, which I’m very pleased with and seems to have given me another speed bump I was wanting, it’s only days old and so far it’s great. This Pismo also has 1GB RAM, a SuperDrive, Airport, a Wegener Media G4 550Mhz Processor, NewerTech Hi Power battery, oh and another trick I got for it as part of my hard drive upgrade plan is an MCE Tech expansion bay hard drive kit, just the empty kit as I already had my previously upgraded Samsung 80GB 5400rpm drive coming out of this machine looking for a new home, which has also been faultless, so what better than a Pismo with twin hard drives, now I can just pop out the SuperDrive and slide in the second hard drive and I have a portable clone backup drive or a 180GB hard drive in a Pismo, I like that.

One thing I did want to do with the hard drive upgrade this time was a clean install of OS X, I run 10.3.9 as I think this is probably the optimum version for the Pismo (correct me if I’m wrong) before performance may decline slightly and clearly I’m trying to get a few drops more not less. The reason for the clean install is my previous drive was cloned from another previous one when I had a G3 chip and as I read some say (eg: FASTMAC) when the OS is installed it checks if the chip is a G4 and if so installs some specific files for the G4 to accelerate performance maybe velocity engine files.

As a result of doing it this way I also wanted to try the Mac migrate everything from your old computer to your new one via firewire target disk, instead of cloning, using Set-up Assistant from utilities which I found only came with computers that shipped with 10.3.4 or later and then in 10.4 it became Migration Assistant.

This seems to have worked well so far, after the transfer I booted on my new drive and everything was theire, all my Apps, Docs etc. only a few network connections have had to be re-entered and the odd App re-install so it’s been almost seamless.

One other pipe dream I have is that one of the tech wizards that upgrade our Pismos with a G4 brain will find a way to morph an Intel brain onto the processor card, now that’d be Cool, I wouldn’t need a new computer until about ahh 2015, well I can’t help wishful dreaming.

This leads me to remind the designers of the new up and coming “Grandson of Pismo” that it should of course have a removable processor card so it can be upgraded at a later date, as well as easy access to everything via a flip open keyboard eg; hard drive, RAM etc, also an internal modem as you suggest Charles, as I’m sure I’m not alone in still faxing often for business and dialling up when travelling, much better than a dongle, and I do like having all the ports at the back instead of the sides as it’s just so much neater when you have lots plugged in, oh and don’t forget the expansion bay for all those add-ons that haven’t even been invented yet, and blah blah Pismo Pismo blah blah blah!!

Again I’m with you Charles re the BLACK polycarbonate RETRO design this would be most desirable, as much as I have always liked the look of the Ti/AL PowerBooks/MacBook Pro’s and have thought I would eventually move to either a 15” or 17” model, the other day when I dropped into one of my local Mac outlets here in Australia just to get some consumable printer stuff, I had to have another play with the new MacBooks and Pro’s, and to my surprise I was very drawn to the Black MacBook, not only for it’s looks but also for it’s feel as in it wasn’t nearly as hot to touch as the AL MacBook Pro’s, as a result I realised what a good test comparison of the various models this was, having them all running for hours in store side by side showed a body heat factor I hadn’t really noticed or considered as much before.

Well all I can say is I can’t wait for my new Pismo.

Regards,
Konrad

___

Hi Konrad;

Thatks for the interesting account and testimonial. Needless to say, I agree with you on pretty much everything you have to say.

I would like to think that someday Apple will make another notebook as good as the Pismo, but I'm not holdong my breath.

I really should get one of those MCE hard drive expansion bay sleds. I'm a big proponent of using hard drives for backup instead of optical disks, and ex. bay hard drives are slick. My daughter had a VST one for her PowerBook 5300 back in the day. It saved my bacon back when the processor died in my WallStreet (which was subsequently resurrected), and I used the 5300 drive housing to transfer my files by installing the WallStreet's hard drive in it and then copying the stuff to ZIP disks and over to my Pismo, which has a Zip expansion bay module.

I have a Seagate 100 GB drive in one of my Pismos, but it's only a 4200 RPM unit. Very quiet, which I like.

I should get around to bumping my RAM to 1 GB.

I used to think that OS 10.3.9 was the optimum OS for the Pismo, but I've rethought that since about OS 10.4.7. Recent versions of Tiger run really well on my Pismos, and I'm going to upgrade both to 10.4.1 eventually, since I've become a big fan of the final version of Safari 3.

The latest Santa Rosa MacBooks reportedly rund a lot cooler than the early revisions did.

Charles

***

Scrutinizing The Macworld Expo Apple Subnotebook Rumors

From ncbill

At a $1500 price point, only a 32GB SSD would be affordable (about $275 retail)

That's a little chintzy for a regular (not sub-) notebook in 2008.

I hope it is as easy to swap hard drives in future portables as it is with my MacBook (a 5 minute procedure), so I can dump that flash drive for a 250GB 2.5" hard drive.

Flash remains largely a gimmick in consumer notebooks - its lower power consumption doesn't add much to overall runtime, since other parts of the notebook use far more power than the drive.

Flash does offer incredible shock resistance, which is usually wasted given most portables (including Apple's) have never been "ruggedized" so that the rest of the notebook can survive the g-force flash can withstand.

___

Hi ncbill;

Good points all.

I figured the same about the price point, which is why I'm expecting it to be in the $1750- $1,800 range.

In my estimation, the quietness of flash memory is a bigger practical advantage than its shock resistance. I assume that falsh will run cooler too.

Charles

*** cmoore@macopinion.com

Provisionally, you can access The Road Warrior Archive to Jan. 16, 2006 by clicking here.

Note: Letters to The Road Warrior may or may not be published in The Road Warrior Mailbag at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context.

If you would prefer that your message not appear in The Road Warrior Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published.

CM