what is oldest weekly use mac you have seen?

[jefhatfield]

a man across the street i know has a 1998 era g3 233 mhz powerbook (mainstreet? wallstreet? or pdq?) he uses every day and he plans to use it until it breaks and becomes a paperwight...amazing if you ask me for a laptop...this thing is between four years and four years-five months old!)

i do have a retired performa 600 desktop from early 1990s (91-92 sometime) that still works perfectly, 030 processor and all, 8 MB of RAM

the oldest daily or weekly pc laptop i know of is mine, a mid-1999 compaq laptop, 366 mhz/32 MB RAM orginally, that i am typing on now...it is bulky and looks to be almost two inches thick...no, i won't attach a picture since i think you want to keep your lunch in your stomach...he he

the oldest working pc desktop i know of is my friend's 486 from 1995 but he recently retired it and got a 1.4 ghz dell laptop

...when i first became a techie in 1999, i never remember seeing any pc laptops that were three years old and working except for toshiba laptops...customers where i worked at office depot would bring in these pentium 1 (sub-100 mhz) toshibas in and these puppies must have weighed 8 or 9 pounds, were 2.5 inches thick, were beige but covered in embedded finger prints and toner/pencil carbon, sported 14.4k modems/28.8 modems, had 16 MB of RAM, and had these passive matrix 9-10" inch screens

they were literally the only three year old (or older) pc laptops i ever saw so i have a good viewpoint of toshiba...yet those 1996 era tan pc laptop-tanks were amazingly ugly

since then, i have not seen any three year old pc laptop except toshibas but when i see my friend's slightly scratched g3 powerbook which is four years old, it makes me realize that for the long term, assuming you want to go there, apple made laptops are the sturdiest and prettiest portables on the market

i believe some tibooks will last five years for some users due to their titanium outer shell and solid guts under the hood

i believe i will never see a four year old working pc laptop ever and being a techie, i see tons of machines and trade notes with other techies/network admins all the time





so that being said, what are your dinosaur computer stories?

 

[barkmonster]

I was using a 7200 last year, it was slow as hell and I was designing posters that we're over 20 feet in length sometime because it was a sign writing company who'd got hold of a couple of old macs and a PosterJet. It was hell to use that thing. I wouldn't have even thought it was fast enough for anything other than running appleworks or something, let alone photoshop, Illustrator and Quark with a 2Gb HD and 48Mb of RAM!

I'm assuming they're still using it or sold it, I ended up leaving the job because of a better offer ( that fell through after they'd found a replacement )

Still, it was an experience making huge posters on something with so little power. It'd take one mac all day to rip 1 poster while I worked on the other mac. It wasn't the most ideal setup for that kind of work.

 

[Nipsy]

well, my Dell Craptop will be three in December, and that's when its warranty runs out.

I just sold a PB 170 which was circa 1991 or 2, and I had sitting in the library to display nothing but book info. I guy I know who works at Apple has a portable which he lugs into work about every two years as a joke, still works.

I'm pretty confident that consumer grade laptops will fail/retire after 3 years, but the pro grade hardware seems pretty solid on both the PC and Mac side.

I've seen a lot of failure in those $1200 Dell/Compaq notebooks which designed with the consumer in mind. I've seen more than one working PB1400/fruit iBook retired by obsolosence.

Lack of upgradeability limits a notebooks life, whereas a 9600 can still be a viable machine with a 800MHz G4...

 

[jefhatfield]

wow - some tough 7200!

7200 - aug 1995 to feb 1997

so if you used this thing last year, it was at least four years old and possibly up to six years old...if they are still using that now, it certainly shows how tough macs are and that thing could technically be seven years old!

there is no pc that can do that work and be that old

i bet the original bondi blue 1998 era imacs will really be worth something in another few years, working or not...especially if steve jobs leaves apple

i heard somewhere that an original apple 1 can be sold on ebay and you can buy a new computer with what you make from that purchase

i wish i kept my old apple II+ and apple IIe, but they made skads of those things so they may never be worth that much...come to think of it, many bondi blue imacs sold and are out there, so they probably only have sentimental value as the machine that saved apple inc in the late-90s

i kept my box and documentation and receipt for my '99 ibook so maybe i could get something for it as a collector's item with all that stuff intact...most people i know with computers more than a year old have tossed their box and documentation away...some of my clients have long tossed their windows restore disk...dumb if you ask me and knowing how windblows needs to be reinstalled once a year

oh, and btw, i have never had to reinstall any mac os as a techie or user before that, and the apple II's also did their job until i donated them to some elementary school

 

[gbojim]

I have a Mac IIci - I think I got it in 1989 - that I use daily as a web server for test purposes.

 

[jefhatfield]

Originally posted by Nipsy

I'm pretty confident that consumer grade laptops will fail/retire after 3 years, but the porgrade hardware seems pretty solid on both the PC and Mac side.

the pro stuff is amazingly...mostly made with a lot of the same guts as consumer parts inside but pro stuff have faster processors and more RAM to start with and perhaps, on the pc side, more software and a pro windows os like 2000, nt, or xp pro

the pro pc laptops i have seen still have weak joints for screen, awful clasps, and too much thinly formed plastic parts...toshiba tecra is the only tough laptop i have ever seen that is not a panasonic outdoor "toughbook"

but mac laptops are built very tough with the titanium tibook and the super tough (tougher than tibook) clamshell ibook or icebook ibook

unless you drop or spill something on an apple built laptop, those things will last three years to four years...of course, unless you get a rare faulty motherboard, logic board, or screen with too many dead pixels

obsolescence will make both pc pro and consumer laptops bite the dust and get too slow to run the hardware

ibooks are doomed to get obsolete because they are running g3 processors and three years is the top of operational ease of use...and maybe only two years since os x is evolving

tibooks will last three years thru warranty, is my guess, but also the one who can afford a tibook will have the money and tech lust to most likely replace that tibook 18 to 24 months later

if i had the money and i bought a rev. a 500 mhz tibook, i would not have that thing now...i would sell or give it away and have a 800 tibook and be lusting for a 1 ghz tibook to purchase in early 2003

but since i am not on my second tibook lusting for a third, i will stick to ibook every three years or so and laugh at those tibook users who complain that their 500 mhz tibook with half a gig of ram is "slowing them down"...he he...i wonder what their sex lives are like

 

[awrc]

Re: wow - some tough 7200!

Originally posted by jefhatfield
7200 - aug 1995 to feb 1997

so if you used this thing last year, it was at least four years old and possibly up to six years old...if they are still using that now, it certainly shows how tough macs are and that thing could technically be seven years old!

there is no pc that can do that work and be that old

Much to my continuing annoyance, my sister-in-law is still using the Gateway PC she bought in 1996. 32MB, Pentium 166MHz, 1.6GB drive. it's in daily use for AOL, world processing, and Quicken. It used to be used by her kids for playing games on too, but they've now reached the point where it doesn't meet the minimum requirements for even kids software.

That's a sure-fire sign of obsolecence - when your computer isn't powerful enough to run pre-school educational software.

I've offered to build them a new system on several occasions, at component cost, even before I discovered she was entitled to educational discount. No dice. She'll continue to use it until the day WordPerfect dies.

I feel sorry for the kids - parents earning well over $250,000 and they're pretty much excluded from the computer age because a 1996-vintage machine is enough for their mother's WordPerfect.

 

[jefhatfield]

gbojim - that is a record for any daily use mac or pc...kudos to you...you should tell the IT press...really!

and about having a 1996 laptop with parents that have a household income of 250k...amazing

unless they are in debt or spread too thin, believe me...i have seen this with people who even make way more than a 1/4 mil/yr, they should get a new computer

a 166 mhz pc laptop must be painful...what kind of modem?... 28.8 or 14.4?

but come to think of it, 166 mhz laptops were around in 1997 and even 1998, so a 166 mhz sporting laptop must have been super state of the art...back then in 1996

but she will be able to run word perfect, assuming it's the same version until the laptop dies, which may be a long time and then they will have to be forced to buy a new machine for ...the...next...six...years

heck, even stailin had "five year plans"

 

[ibookin']

Originally posted by jefhatfield

unless you drop or spill something on an apple built laptop, those things will last three years to four years

My 500MHz iBook still works after being dropped onto a concrete floor. These machines, while not up to the durability standards of the ToughBook, are solid little computers. Everything still works, including the DVD Drive. I intend to keep the machine until the AppleCare warranty runs out (August 2004), at which point I will get a new laptop.

New desktop on the way as soon as the new towers with DDR come out, though. I've got a peecee desktop now.

 

[stromie952]

I've got a couple stories about antiquated Mac usage.

Up until last year, my Mom used a Mac SI to take care of the bills. Worked perfectly with the 40MB hard drive and 16MB of RAM running Excel 4 and Word 4.

The other story involves our main computer. We used our 6500 until September of last year. We then upgraded to the Quicksilver 733. But, we used the 6500 happily and now enjoy the virtues of OS X on my Dad's Quicksilver and my iBook.

 

[jefhatfield]

Originally posted by ibookin'@mwny


My 500MHz iBook still works after being dropped onto a concrete floor.

that is really tough

i don't know if ultra thin tibook can withstand a similar fall onto concrete...maybe since parts are good and titanium is almost as hard as steel

but my thin plastic, super heavy pc laptop would be in pieces...heck , the feet fell off with regular use and the hinges which hold the screen up has 1 1/2" inches of play in it... i have a compaq so that is no surprise..ok to keep on desk at home but i would never travel with it...it would be dead in a year even if i carried it on

also feet that hold the hinges on pops off on left side and right clicker sticks when i click it...battery died after just one year and the contact on battery melted

 

[Beej]

I have a PowerBook 3400c @ 200 MHz I (kinda) use weekly... it just sits there and runs SETI. Sometimes I take it to the lounge and pump my MP3s through the stereo there.

The oldest Mac I use daily is a G4 400.

 

[tjwett]

Up until a few months ago my parents were still using a circa '96 Gateway with a PII 120mhz, 16mb RAM, and a 28k modem. Like someone said earlier, these are 2 people who's annual income probably exceeds 300k. My mother used it to play "Free Cell", whatever that is, and my father never touched the thing. My little sister came home from college and hooked up her PIII 667 mhz Wintel and demanded high-speed internet. So they finally caved. Happy to say my youngest sister is off to start college at the end of the month and I'll be taking here to Tekserve to pick out a shiny new iBook. My first switch!

 

[brogers]

I have a Performa 550....Not sure when it came out..(early 90's maybe). I bought it new because I wanted a CD ROM to play a new little game called Myst. Now I'm a Mac Junkie. I just turned it off for the night. My kids use it to play Dark Castle and Lemmings and other educational stuff. I also have a 1997 Performa 6400. Still works great. My wife now uses my 1999 iMac DV SE and I am typing this on my iMac 800 superdrive. I can't bring myself to sell them, donate them or store them. I love them....

 

[ShaolinMiddleFinger]

The oldest one I saw was in a small room at the Elementary School here....it was a Mac Clone....it looked like a PC but was running Macintosh.... The staff only uses for the school cafeteria's lunch money program

 

[Nipsy]

Originally posted by jefhatfield


the pro stuff is amazingly...mostly made with a lot of the same guts as consumer parts inside but pro stuff have faster processors and more RAM to start with and perhaps, on the pc side, more software and a pro windows os like 2000, nt, or xp pro

Perhaps I should have said corporate...

The laptops built for large coprorate orders ususally remove features, add ram & speed, and have fewer things to fail.

A corporate laptop lacks the pseudo-surround speakers of a consumer laptop. The Combo drive is a CDROM. The OS is more likely to be 2000 Pro. The chassis will be simple and proven.

The consumer grade laptops are more compromising. Instead of being seen from the ground up as a second machine, they try to replace the corporate desktop + laptop, and with more stuuf crammed into less space, they fail.

this is not true of Apple hardware, where corporate does not really apply (yet) like it does in the Wintel world/

 

[Kal-EL]

The computer I use everyday isn't all that old. It's a G4 500 Dual Processor with 70 gigs HD space, 1024megs ram, and a Superdrive. I have my brothers Performa 6400/180(which I traded for my G3 233 tower when I got the G4) next to the G4 not running at the moment but still working perfectly. I'd like to network the two so I can utilize the floppy drive with the G4. I also own a Mac Plus(currently packed away), and a Mac II. The Mac II currently flashes the ? during startup and I'd like to run an older copy of norton utilities to get it working again for the games on it. The oldest computer that I regularly use though is my Powerbook 140. I am an amateur fiction writer and the PB 140 has Word version 5.0 installed on it. With a 40 meg HD, the PB is a wonderful little portable word processor for all my writing needs.

 

[bbarnhart]

PowerMac 8500

I use this machine all the time. It has a Sonnet 300 Mhz G3 chip in it, but it is amazingly slow compared to our 466 iBook. It's the bus speed, stupid! The 8500 bus is 33Mhz and I think the iBook is 66Mhz. Performing a jpg rotate take forever on the 8500, but is darn quick on the iBook.

However, I still use the 8500 for surfing, Excel, Word, Quicken and Photoshop Elements many times a week.

 

[zimv20]

I occasionally fire up my 1985 Mac 512ke. It has no hard drive; it boots off floppy. I upgraded its RAM to 1 meg in '88.

Why do I use it? Because my very old 3.5" floppies don't read on my USB floppy drive. Though I have no network options on the machine, it's fun to see my old art stuff (in Paint and Draw) and of course my Word docs are readable. But I'm SOL if I need to get any old Performer files (MIDI sequencer).

Sometime in '86 I think I bought a second floppy drive so I could run apps w/o having to swap the app disk and the system disk. Fun stuff.

Also still have a working IIci (w/o a monitor, but I can access the 100 meg HD through SCSI). My 266MHz g3 runs a webserver. I now use my dual 500 g4 to run ProTools.

And I'm typing this on my g3 Lombard Powerbook.

Oh, I still use my Newton.

 

[Huked on Fonick]

my school still uses LC 1, 2, and 3s and my uncle has an orignal Macintosh i dont remembe what kind but it has signatures inside and is make of wood..... my dad still uses his old 1994/1995 dell laptop that clocks in at a blazing 70mhz... P1 we ungraded the ram to 72(max)(only thing that keeps it going) and the screen on it is way smaller than my 12 inch ibook.....he doesent useing it for very much only for sinking his palm on the go (SERIAL STYLEZ) and typing the internet also works on it and we have it on our Airport network but its kinda slIZZZZOooo...we had a old 386 that worked but the motherboard cacked somehow (we stuck foam underit and it worked but we got rid of it) and i have a 486 sitting on my front porch... was going to use it as a server with lunix but i bought a eternet/802.11b router instead thats probbly more powerfull...lol(and alot smaller)i have a bunch of old p1s ranging from 100-233 clocks that are aroung we never use them cuz we got alot faster s Peeceees...... all off our old machines have 1 saving grace... RAMMMMMMM i am a firm beliver in there is never two much ram so they are all maxed out one of my pcs has 4 gigs... i found out that the windows 95-me does not support more than 752.. i tried putting a gig in....but i had to go to windows 2000.. it now has 4 gigs the max for x86... sigh...RAM RAM RAM RAM.. gota love the stuff

 

[bousozoku]

I was still using my PowerComputing PowerCenter 120/225 daily until my QuickSilver displaced it on the desk. I'm trying to find a place for it that has power.

I still use an Atari 8-bit machine from the mid 1980s to play games. I got the Commodore monitor in 1983 and it's still working pretty well.

 

[G5orbust]

The New York musem of television and radio's library has like 30 old macs (circa very early 1990's) that they use for serches. Sorry, but i dont know the model.

 

[G5orbust]

The New York musem of television and radio's library has like 30 old macs (circa very early 1990's) that they use for serches. Sorry, but i dont know the model. Some version of the Mac II i think.

Sorry about double posting. But, it wont let me erase the post that i made accidentally (the one before this one). It says something about me not being able to do that because im not the administrator. O Well.

 

[Zaren]

Older regular use Macs

I had an SE/30 that was sitting in my cubicle as a webserver and webcam until fairly recently. I still have a Powerbook 190cs that I use to transfer files to and from my Newton 2100 - since it doesn't want to do AppleTalk over the 802.11 network Then there's the 7100 with G3 upgrade that sits in a corner, crunching rc5 and serving as a printer server.

 

[Griffindor73]

You guys have obviously never looked around British primary school! As a teacher I have see lots of machines made by a company called Acorn. Most of these date back to the early ninties and, as they were specifically designed for use in schools, are virtually indistructable. The OS (Risc OS) was actually quite good, and very mac-like in the way it opperated, including a bar at the bottom of the screen where icons appeared when you opened a program, as well as files for the system folder (sound familiar?) The also had the luxury of a THREE buttoned mouse! (Oh, we can only dream...) And yep, many of them are still being used today.
However before the Acorn RISC PCs they made the BBC Micro in the 80's, and yes, some of these are still working and being used- shows you how well they were made! Sadly the company went bust when Windozes PC began to become more popular and cheaper, but their legacy still lives on (just).