Recycled Computing

PowerBook a Perfect Cabin Computer

- 2011.09.01

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Short link: http://bit.ly/mPHgGE

My uncle owns a cabin on a local lake. It is a traditional New Hampshire cabin, in that it was built by the property owner as a supplement to the boathouse. It's not like some monstrous structure built by some rich flatlanders who made their money in the savings and loans scandal.

You reach this cabin on a dirt track laid down by the native Americans before there were four-wheel drive SUVs. My uncle has a phone line and electricity, but the septic system is dodgy, and calling the cabin rustic is, well, complimentary.

When I went over to visit the other day, my uncle had scored a 12" PowerBook G4 laptop.

I know - the twin of my G4, only in better shape, because it went nowhere near an athletic department. Apparently, someone at the Ivy League college that my uncle retired from found this old PowerBook and gave it to him. It has a 512 MB memory card in addition to the 128 MB on the logic board (640 MB total) and a CD drive instead of a DVD drive.

12-inch PowerBook G4 My uncle has a dial-up connection at the cabin, but the PowerBook was having some trouble with the browser. As the family's Apple fanboy, I was only too happy to pop the hood and take a look inside.

Well, you don't see Microsoft Internet Explorer for Mac any more (you can download a copy of version 5.1.7 here) and the PowerBook was running OS X 10.2.3 (I believe that was the "Hello Kitty" version of OS X). For some reason, every time we launched Internet Explorer or the Mail program, an error message from Internet Connect claiming that it could not open the communication device. Whatever.

I took the PowerBook home and hooked it up to my wireless network - cool, the Wireless Extreme card worked! But Internet Connect continued it's funky error message. So I bit the bullet and installed OS X 10.4 Tiger and then TenFourFox. As Jim Nabors used to say, "Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!" The browser launched without any messages, and I was on the Internet, browsing over to Low End Mac's homepage.

All my uncle intends to do is use this old Mac to get his email and browse the Internet. G4 computers don't really have much value to computer thieves (what do they know!), so he can safely leave it there all year round. Another computer recycled to serve usefully in our new digital future.

I realize that I am a PPC Luddite to many, someone who will just not move forward in the day of Intel and Apple chips and solid state drives, but in this situation, it is a good fit. Using a G4 processor (like I do) as a main work computer is pressing your luck, but since the price was free, there are some advantages. I might as well enjoy it as long as I can.

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