- 2006.09.12
Hello everyone,
Last time I talked about how I was
having problems with my servers, and how one of my managers at
McDonald's wanted to join me in 30 days of "old school"
computing.
Well, I managed to get my servers running again, and so far I
haven't had any more problems with them.
As for my manager, I don't know what the deal is. I set up the
Classic II for him to use, but he has yet to come and pick it up.
I'm guessing that he doesn't really want to proceed with the
project.
Oh well, that's his loss, not mine. I'm sure there are plenty of
other people out there that would love to join me.
Today I'm writing this at work while I'm on break. I bet you're
wondering how I managed to pull this off.
I
brought in my PowerBook 170, which
still has a working battery. The wonderful thing about the
PowerBook 170 is that I can turn down the processor speed, turn off
the backlight on the screen (you can do that with color LCDs, but
you can't see them too well), open ClarisWorks (or MS Word, or Word
Perfect, or whatever you want to use), spin down the hard drive,
and be able to type for a good long while.
I'm not sure just how long I will be able to pull it off, but
I'm only on a 30 minute break. The battery should be able to hold
out that long.
I must say that the PowerBook is doing really well. AIM,
WannaBe, MacLynx,
Eudora Lite 1.3.1, even iCab 2.9.9
work great.
iCab is by no means fast, but it works when I need to visit
sites that WannaBe and MacLynx simply can't handle, like online
forums, and sites where I need to see pictures.
WannaBe is my browser of choice: it's super fast and works
great. The only problem I have with it is I cannot use Google or
any other search engine, because you can't input data. When that
happens, I just use MacLynx. It works without any problems, it's
just slower a and doesn't look as good (it's the best browser for
compact Macs).
AIM works really well on this PowerBook. Sure, it isn't as fast
as running it on a Power Mac G3 (or even a 7500), but I wouldn't
expect it to be.
And yes, email works just fine using Eudora Lite 1.3.1, with one
exception: It likes to encode all attachments in BinHex, so no one
can open any attachment I send. Oh well, that's only a minor
setback.
So far everything seems to be working great, without any major
problems at all.
Wish me luck, and stay tuned more Old School Computing articles
are to come. 
