Yes, I know, there are still quite a few Powerbooks of the "G3 Firewire" variety being used today. I just wanted to dramatize the subject line a bit. 
My Pismo G3 500mhz still runs remarkably well. I haven't upgraded the processor to G4 or anything like that. Since 2000, the only changes I have made was upping the ram from 128mb to 512mb, buying someone else's unused battery cheap because mine went almost dead, and adding a $10 usb adapter for wireless access, which works just as well as an Airport card would have.
What amazes me is that except for the original battery, all the hardware is still in perfect working order. During these past 6 years of regular (albeit not quite daily) use, it has even been dropped a few times...but this thing keeps on trucking without ever needing replacements or repair.
Granted: it's slow in today's field, it stutters when video has been heavily encoded (not with DVDs, tho), it has no built-in disc writer, and I don't think that going from Panther to Tiger would be a good idea given the G3 processor. Oh, and it set me back $4000 back in 2000 when this was the most premium laptop on the market. But I love it still.
Heh, I just felt like sharing that.
My Pismo G3 500mhz still runs remarkably well. I haven't upgraded the processor to G4 or anything like that. Since 2000, the only changes I have made was upping the ram from 128mb to 512mb, buying someone else's unused battery cheap because mine went almost dead, and adding a $10 usb adapter for wireless access, which works just as well as an Airport card would have.
What amazes me is that except for the original battery, all the hardware is still in perfect working order. During these past 6 years of regular (albeit not quite daily) use, it has even been dropped a few times...but this thing keeps on trucking without ever needing replacements or repair.
Granted: it's slow in today's field, it stutters when video has been heavily encoded (not with DVDs, tho), it has no built-in disc writer, and I don't think that going from Panther to Tiger would be a good idea given the G3 processor. Oh, and it set me back $4000 back in 2000 when this was the most premium laptop on the market. But I love it still.
Heh, I just felt like sharing that.
