My Mac History part 6

The venerable 12" PowerBook G4

On a cold January day in 2005, after selling my trusty iBook to a friend, I carried my brand new 12″ PowerBook G4 to the usual favorite coffee shop to unpack it and begin another long laptop relationship. I remember taking it out of the box and its protective sleeve and ooh-ing and aah-ing over the aluminum case. It was so compact and yet sturdy at the same time. Upon opening it and pressing the power button I was greeted with the familiar start-up chime and then the Welcome to OSX screen. The PowerBook came with 10.3 Panther (eventually upgraded to 10.5 Leopard – as far as it can go) and an upgraded 768 MB of RAM. Only in its fifth year did it start to feel slow.

The 12″ PowerBook was the most durable computer I’ve owned so far and was a joy to use. Its 1.33 GHz processor handled most tasks nicely. Complicated Flash animations bogged it down (nothing surprising there) and I wouldn’t have tried to play many an FPS on it but it did run the World of Warcraft 10-day demo nicely. Its rugged case survived a three-foot drop onto carpet (not my fault) without affecting its performance in any way and protected it well as it traveled to Mexico, Israel and Italy (not to mention all over the U.S.).

When I sold old faithful on eBay last December, it was a sentimental moment for me. I used that computer to write emails to my then-girlfriend, now-wife while I was overseas during the early part of our relationship and iChat with her while we were in different classes at seminary at the same time. It was also used to start my first blog, plan our wedding and write the words I spoke at my mother’s funeral. That little machine served me well for almost five years and now (thanks to a new battery I purchased before I sold it) is being used by someone else to manage his life/business.

Got a favorite computer from your history? Share about it in the comments section.

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