Brave G3-based PowerBook User in a New Intel-based/v10.5 World
| by Joe Leo, Columnist |
continued... from: previous page
Not that this is scientific or anything--it's not--but that kind of represents a good majority of users out there who either still have those machines somewhere in the house, have passed it on to parents (or grandparents) who just need basic computing, or for the rare few, still use those machines as their daily Macs.
And there's nothing wrong with that! Not everyone needs the blazing fast Intel processors found in today's Macs. Nor do some need the G4 or G5 yesterday's-screaming-machines line in order to survive. Some are perfectly happy with their G3s. (If you're still using anything pre-G3, then we'll have to start criticizing you and ask what in the world you're doing??).
With this columnist's situation, one replaced the other, or became a supplement to the other. The PowerMac G3 brought to work for use there, and the iMac DV put in its place at home. The Pismo was the supplement to the G3. Then, both G3s weren't cutting it for the high-end work, so the PowerMac G4 was brought in with the Pismo for word processing, internet, and e-mail.
Finally, to match the G4 in specs, a 12-inch PowerBook was purchased to replace the Pismo, and subsequently (with G4-ness getting to someone's head... really, speed and performance issues with Tiger), the iMac DV at home replaced with a G4 Mac mini.
Why the 15-inch PowerBook just recently? Different reasons. Why not a MacBook or MacBook Pro? One reason. Classic support and PowerPC-native applications still in use.
But what about those--so we can start talking about someone else for a change--who are comfortable with their G3s and never ever migrated to G4, G5, and today's Intel-based Macs? Well, let's meet someone who offered to spill their guts with us on the topic, especially since he's a user of the venerable and all-time king of Apple notebooks, the "Pismo" PowerBook.
Earlier this year, we "met" an Apple user online who helped us with some issues in regard to the new purchase of that 12-inch PowerBook G4. Being fellow Pismo users (though one a former and the other still current), we got to wondering why this person was still using a G3 machine as their main computer, especially in this day in age where even G4s/G5s are old!
As with some stories planned for these pages, sometimes other news takes precedence and feature stories get pushed back (and sometimes, "forgotten"-- though not literally) and saved for later. This story, at least the next part of this story, is an example of one of them.
The perfect idea to get the ball rolling again? Or should we say, the cat pouncing again? The release of Leopard, and sealing the demise of the best PowerBook ever, the G3-based Pismo.
Enter C. Kanhai (first name "withheld" for privacy, since he's a public figure on the Apple Discussions forum in the support area of Apple.com), a long-time Mac user who uses a Pismo, and only a Pismo--one with an original stock processor--for their everyday, mobile and non-mobile computing tasks.
While family members around him have more powerful machines, at least compared to the Pismo, in the form of G4 processors, why is Kanhai still content with his Pismos?
(Did we mention that he has two? Forgot that minor detail).
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