[Dr.Michael]

Hello,

in the forums we mostly hear about bad things happening to us and our portables.

I would like to know what your all time favorite portable was? Not only Powerbooks and iBooks, lets also include X86 machines.

I myself owned 8 portables so far. 4 X86 (Highscreen 486, Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook E6560, Dell C810, IBM Thinkpad T40) and 4 Macs (iBook Blueberry, Pismo 500 MHz, TiBook 500 MHz, AlBook 12 inch, 1GHz).

Until last month my all time favorite was the Pismo 500 MHz. It was fast (at its time), had great options concerning battery power and general extensibility with the free bay and the pc card slot. And it looked really great.
I sold it after 3.5 years of use and it never ever left me standing in the rain. A tough worker.

I also liked my iBook Blueberry for its nice looks. It was always fun to work on it because of the friendly color and the great palmrest. Very ergonomic. It was a little heavy but the handle...what a great idea.
It will not become my favorite because of the limited screen space and no options for external displays.

Now, tar and feather me, third in this club was my Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook E6560 (P3 700). Same extensibility as the Pismo, the most excellent hardware quality I ever had combined with really noble design and durability. A pity that it only ran Windows.

Now I use a 12 inch rev b Powerbook. It has all chances to replace the Pismo from its top rank. But its really too early to say because no-one knows how good this thing will be looking back after 3 years of use.

I am very curious what your opinions will be.

[angelmb]

My all time favorite portables, from Apple and the rest out there are:

Check them here:

http://www.spymac.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=25750

[Luca Rescigno]

My favorite laptops, in no particular order:

- PowerBook 1400
- Clamshell iBook
- PowerBook G3 Wallstreet
- IBM Thinkpads (in general)

I own a PowerBook 1400. It's a really cool, cleverly designed machine. Everything about it is expandable and it's fun to use. You can get a Zip, SuperDisk, floppy, or CD drive for the expansion bay. There are two PC card slots. The RAM allows two upgrade chips to be used at once, unlike the vast majority of portables at the time which only took one upgrade chip at once. The keyboard is as good as any desktop keyboard. The hinges are perfect. The processor can be upgraded. An ethernet port, modem, or video out port can be added to the motherboard. It's really a sweet little machine.

Clamshell iBooks are so durable and they feel great. I've only used one once, but after using it, I had myself a little clamshell love-fest for about a week where I wanted nothing more than to get one (preferably a key lime one). That passed but I still think it's a great laptop. The new ones just don't have the durability and especially not the personality. They're not as comfortable to use either.

Wallstreets are a lot like the later PowerBook G3s, the Pismos and Lombards, but bigger. They're big and heavy but really durable. Like Pismos and Lombards (which sadly I've never had the opportunity to use, otherwise I bet the Pismo would have made the list), they can have many upgrades. Great machines for OS 9 at least.

A friend of mine has a semi-old IBM Thinkpad. It's a Pentium II. What a machine. The 13.3" screen is one of the best I've ever seen, the keyboard is excellent, and the entire thing is extremely well engineered. The hinges work exactly as hinges should - they hold the display firmly in place with no wiggling. That's why I like the 1400 so much - its hinges are just like the hinges on that Thinkpad. I also like the little eraser nub pointing device unlike most people (my brother calls it the "dick stick.").

[WOPR]

I know what had the best keyboard ever - the Psion MC200. How's that for obscure.

Oh, and my rev.a 12" PB is awesome too.

[fisherKing]

powerbook 2400c...
10.4" screen.
small, lite, fast (for it's day).
had it from 1997 (i think) until 2000
(my friend still uses it)

built by ibm for apple, built like a tank.

took it everywhere...

[Luca Rescigno]

Originally posted by WOPR:
I know what had the best keyboard ever - the Psion MC200. How's that for obscure.

w00t! 20 hours of battery life too, on internal batteries. With the external 8 AA-cell battery pack, it was about 80 hours. I always thought those tiny, PDA-like laptops were cool. Given the technology of the time, they made the most sense. You just couldn't have a desktop replacement in a small package. Too bad battery life has gone to sh*t since then.

EDIT: The old picture was of the MC400, which had a screen twice as tall. This has been fixed.

[adrianl]

Just 2 portables in 12 years of Mac ownership (6 machines in all), but G4 12 inch stuck in Apple's broken Europe distribution chain (they switched depots and can no longer progress stuff at the new depot!):

PB 165. Something like a 33Mhz cpu I recall, faster than my LC at the time! Outstanding quality. Mono screen. Used from 93-99 then passed to nephew who's still using it!

Wall Street 14inch 266 since 1999. Typing this on it. Excellent screen, fabulous build quality, looks as good now as when I bought it but very heavy to lug to presentations (main reason for getting lighter G4 plus chance to test the OSX waters before upgrading desktop). This is my favourite. Utterly reliable and feels bullet-proof. I get the feeling Apple quality's slipped since they made this. CD, floppy drive click into bay very positively. All I've changed is to add 64MB of RAM but it runs 8.6 rock-solid with 128MB (and I plan to add 512 to the new G4 immediately - amazing how RAM requirements have been bloated by OSX).

Will be sad to see this go when I part with it, but will keep it for some time till I'm confident in OSX doing what I need and the G4 12inch. Expect the latter to be light years ahead in overall capability though so hope I'm not disappointed!

Adrian

[SEkker]

Tie:
1) my Pismo 400, which I got as a part of a tradeup from Apple for a totally destroyed PB 190. It's still in use after 3+ hard years, and still looks nearly new. Put a 5400 rpm HD on it, runs OSX just fine. First modern PB that was built like a tank by Apple.

2) [when it works] My revA PB17. The first PB which meant no major loss when upgrading from the Pismo. Great keyboard, great screen, too bad it's had to go back to Apple twice for repairs. From the posts here and the comments from AppleCare tech reps and unlike the 15 PB, this appears to be an unlucky exception.

[Luca Rescigno]

Originally posted by SEkker:
First modern PB that was built like a tank by Apple.

I'd have to disagree. I think the only really non-tank like laptops Apple has made are the newer ones. I'm not saying the Pismo isn't durable, but the Wallstreet was tougher, and so was the iBook from a few months prior to the Pismo. And many of the early PowerBooks were very durable. I've owned or at least used a PowerBook 520c, a 5300, a 1400, and a 3400, and they all seemed like they could take a beating (especially the 1400 and the 520c). The newer ones are too thin, it makes them flimsy.

CLARIFICATION: IMHO, the Pismo was the LAST laptop Apple made that was built like a tank.

[ingeniero]

CLARIFICATION: IMHO, the Pismo was the LAST laptop Apple made that was built like a tank. [/B]

I've owned 4 portables in the past. Mac-wise, a Wallstreet, and my current one, the Pismo 500. I love this machine. I love the fact that I use 2 batteries with the expansion bay. It runs OS X just fine (currently panther). I may bite the bullet and get a Rev B Alu15 PB and my wife is going to make me sell the Pismo. I'll miss it dearly.

[motorhead]

Okay this is really long. I got carried away, but I love this thread. It's been interesting and cool to see laptops and their respective platforms evolve over the dozen or so years that I've used them.

Here are the laptops I've owned or used for work:

Toshiba T1000SE
This one got me through college. It was the best, most useful laptop I've ever had. I still remember it fondly. 10mhz 8086. It ran MSDOS 3.3, and the OS was installed in ROM. This did two very useful things: 1. didn't let you hose the OS, and 2. booted faster than slick business, since it booted from ROM. I had a 2MB ram card in the machine, which was configured as "hard-RAM", and stored all my files and applications on it. Applications: LetterPerfect (scaled down WordPerfect), Qedit (text editor), and ProComm Plus (connectivity program). These apps also ran off hardram and were thus superfast. This left 100k of space for my word processing files. 100k, and it was actually plenty. The usual wordperfect document was about 2-3k. Even for an undergrad English major, this was plenty of space.
You could close the lid and put the machine to sleep, and the contents stayed in the hardram card as long as the battery had a charge. Daily I would save the hardram files off to the single 1.44" floppy drive. The battery lasted over 4 hours. The keyboard was terrific. 2400 baud internal modem. Nothing was wasted in the design -- it wasn't a stunner aesthetically, but everything did what it was supposed to. It's taken over 13 years to find a laptop whose lid I could close when finished, then open when ready to start again, and not have to deal with a lame slow sleep wakeup or a cold boot. The 2mb hardram card is now an 80gb drive, and the 10mhz 8086 processor is now a 1.33ghz G4. How far we've come? Maybe not. I got more done with the Toshiba than any other box since.

Powerbook 165
Grad school. Good machine, but I never used it as much as I could have. Pointing device was a trackball -- pretty good concept, long gone now. Biggest mistake was installing System 7 over System 6. First instance of OS bloat on the Mac platform. Never ran fast after that.

IBM Thinkpad 760ED
Unmemorable, clunky. Windows 95. Pointing device on all the Thinkpads is a trackpoint nub. I prefer these to the Powerbook trackpads.

IBM Thinkpad 770
Great design and keyboard. Heavy, but the screen (13.3") and good, full-sized keyboard made schlepping it around worth it. Windows 95.

IBM Thinkpad 770ED. A work of art, and a major workhorse. 14.1" screen, incredible keyboard -- best ever. The machine propped up on fold-out stilts that made typing really natural too. Faster processor than the previous 770. The 770s were the first Thinkpads with a universal removable hot-swappable peripheral standard, the ultrabay: DVD drive, CD drive, and my favorite, a second battery. With the second battery installed I could get over five hours of battery life. This mug was heavy though, I think around eight pounds. This is when I moved from shoulder bag to backpack. The real limiter then was the OS: Windows 95. Windows 95 was such crap that I actually had to reinstall the OS from scratch every 4-5 months because it chewed itself up from the inside out.

IBM Thinkpad 600X. Another beauty. Faster than the previous 600s, and much much lighter than the 770s, this one was a major winner. Win98 too, which held up much more strongly than Win95. *Almost* had my sleep/resume reuirement, but fell a little short. Another outstanding Thinkpad keyboard, and again the ultrabay swappable peripherals, including a second battery. I lamented the passing of this model.

IBM Thinkpad T20. (Okay can you tell who my employer was yet?)
Year 2000, major redesign, the T-series. First PIII Thinkpad I think. The T-series design is still in use now -- a pretty good run in design terms. I got a rev a version right off the line, and it held up well for over two years, the longest I ever had a work laptop. The overall chassis and keyboard lost a step from previous models, though. Even the packaging was noticeably sparing, cardboard-y and cheap compared to previous packaging designs. Still the machine held up. Used it with a mini-dock (Apple: need mini-docks please), put a 7200rpm drive in it, and had the usual ultrabay peripherals: cd-rw, second battery, dvd drive (pre-combo drive days). First use of Windows 2000, and this made a *huge* difference. Faster, way more stable, and finally had sleep/resume (albeit slow and groggy waking up). Only had to reboot weekly or so ("only", he says). A winner, but a big slip in sturdiness from 770 and 600 series.

iBook 500mhz
A really terrific machine, but ultimately too slow for me and OSX. I could never reconcile OS9's slow networking, particularly web browsing and just generally hanging for long periods in IE whilst finding network things, and with OSX fixing all these things beautifully and non-crashy but just going too darned slow. The 66mhz bus finally did me in, and I sold it. And please: dedicated home/end/pageup/pagedown keys? It's time, it is time.

Dell Latitude C400
Have used this for a year and a half now at work, and it's a solid performer. Much much lighter than any other laptop I've ever had, but ultimately uninspiring and dull. It does what it needs to. Still Win2k, see no reason to upgrade to XP.

Powerbook 17" rev.b
There oughta be a drumroll. I was mistaken to call any Thinkpad a work of art. *This* machine is a work of art. It is the most gorgeous piece of electronics I've ever seen, much less owned.
Originally I got a 15" Aluminum rev a Superdrive model. And like many others, it had lots of problems. Silly, Apple-avoidable problems. I almost left the brand for another few years. But I stuck with it and asked Apple to upgrade me to a 17".
They did, and now I've got this beaut. (And no it's not too big or heavy!)
Now this, this machine -- I can't think of a bad thing to say about it. OSX has finally caught up -- Panther is a sturdy solid usable fast smart OS and I love it. It really does everything. And *finally* I get back the feature I've wanted since my 1990 Toshiba T1000SE, my instant-on sleep/resume. Close the lid, open the lid. Reboot? Never! Time will tell if I get as much done on this baby as I did on my Toshiba. It might just be a contender.

[Ph.D.]

Powerbook 170!

25 MHz, 8 MB memory, brilliant active-matrix monochrome screen, compact, light, sturdy, great little feet in the back to prop it up , nice trackball, etc. I eventually upgraded the hard disk to a whopping 320 MB, and with ram-doubler and speed-doubler, it was heaven!

Believe it or not, my new Al 12" isn't really that much better. Sure, inside it's worlds more advanced, but when I load M$ Word it is still more sluggish than that old 170 ever was. It feels more fragile, no feet to prop it up, it has a fan that can get pretty noisy, the screen has terrible vertical viewing problems, and I just can't get used to the trackpad.

O.k., I'll keep the Al 12" anyway!

Cheers.

[Lateralus]

My favorite portable of all time has to be the PowerBook G3 'Pismo' Series. Incredible machines, truly incredible.

Oddly enough, I came into posession of my Pismo after I had gone through an iBook 500 and an iBook 700/Radeon. While the 700 iBook did have the speed edge over the Pismo, it didn't matter to me. The Pismo was and still is in a completely different class than the iBook.

[anaphora68]

I had a pismo 400 for about 4 years, it lasted me through senior year of high school and up until now (last year of college). It was one tough laptop, nice screen, decent performance.

I decided to pick up a 1ghz G4 powerbook (15 inch) and haven't looked back since. I don't think it's as rugged as the Pismo, but it sure is a looker.

Anything powerbook is something I'm happy with, they're built to last, and pack a lot of features into fairly attractive packages, much better than any of those new Dells or Compaqs et al.

[WOPR]

Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:


w00t! 20 hours of battery life too, on internal batteries. With the external 8 AA-cell battery pack, it was about 80 hours. I always thought those tiny, PDA-like laptops were cool. Given the technology of the time, they made the most sense. You just couldn't have a desktop replacement in a small package. Too bad battery life has gone to sh*t since then.

EDIT: The old picture was of the MC400, which had a screen twice as tall. This has been fixed.

Yes! Glad there's another one out there!

[mintcake]

Actually guys, my favourite ever laptop was and still is the Psion Series 7. Shockingly undermarketed, it was the perfect accompaniment to any desktop PC/Mac, synched perfectly with all major office suites, happily connected to the 'net, graphics fantastic for what it was (a blown-up Psion 5mx) and you could get over 12 hours on one charge. Whip that out on a plane and watch the Vaio toting n00b next to you wither in envy. Heh.

Obviously it's no 12" PB and it's not trying to be, but I honestly think it was (and is) one of the most shamefully under-rated machines ever. Many people think they want a fully-blown laptop when actually they just want a PDA with a usable screen and keyboard. If all you want is basic office functionality, e-mail/web, calendar functions, it delivers in spades.

[urrl78]

Out of

Sager 9.9 lb P-III 750 Mhz 15" w/ 8 MB GPU

500 Mhz Ti

667 DVI Ti

Ghz Rev A 17"

Gotta say the 17" wins hands down. Still looks new after 7 months. 6.8 lbs is no big deal for a real man to carry around. After all, if Mini Me can do it I can do it. I could never go for a smaller screen size once bitten by the 17" bug. And the compliments are still comming.

[Luca Rescigno]

Originally posted by WOPR:
Yes! Glad there's another one out there!

It's not mine, this was from a Google image search.

http://www.tradeinpost.com/comp.html

This place (which happens to be in the UK) has one for sale. �100 though, seems kinda steep for such an old thing (unless it's a rare collector's item I guess).

[Luca Rescigno]

mintcake, that's pretty cool. I didn't know Psion was still making little portable computers (I hadn't heard of them until WOPR mentioned them) but apparently so!

Anyway, that is a good concept. A little writing pad is all I would really want or need. My PowerBook 1400 serves that purpose admirably, but unfortunately the battery life isn't too good.

[mintcake]

It really is a beautiful machine. To be honest I'm not sure if they *are* still making them, Psion pulled out of the consumer PDA market a year or two ago, to focus on its software for mobile phones (Psion's operating system for its 32-bit PDAs, EPOC, is at the heart of Symbian, a joint venture between Psion and some of the major handset manufacturers including Nokia & Sony Ericsson). I still use my Psion 5mx on a daily basis as my PDA, it may be getting on a bit now but his has all the functionality I need as well as a keyboard large enough to touch-type on. There's also a fantastic user community with shedloads of great freeware/shareware. Of course, when my 12" AlBook arrives (this week, hopefully) then its future may be the display cabinet... But it has served me well... *sniff*

My wife had a Series 7, unfortunately she had to leave it with her employers when she left her job. Bummer. :(

[pcwizard]

Check the new Sony Viao Z1

We bought one for one our employees - what an amazing machine and is sooooo lite.

Check it out

[Dr.Michael]

Thanks to all who posted a reply.
That was really interesting to read.

[Blackstealth]

Apple:

PowerBook Duo 280c, My first Powerbook, but all the Duos were pretty damn good, nicely sized, good battery life and very expandable if you had a DuoDock. The plethora of different minidocks available were great too.

x86:

The only x86 laptop I ever possesed, and by far the nicest one I've ever used, ThinkPad T20. It took one hell of a beating and kept ticking without any problems. Had to buy a new battery after 12 months but other than that it was excellent. The expansion bays were nice back in the days when floppy disks were commonplace, but I haven't had reason to use one for a good few years now. However it did take an absolute eternity to boot up.

[Voch]

My old Duo 230 was great for its time in early 1994 (my senior year in college) and got lots of oohs and aahs on campus. I showed my final project to my professor with it and he was fascinated by the trackmarble.

But the nod has to go to my current TiBook 667DVI. I get more done with this guy than any computer I've ever used ever. It's great.

Voch

[petehammer]

A great thread as I JUST bought a 1400cs about 10 minutes ago (no joke)!

I haven't powered it up yet (at work) but when I do, I'll be able to add it to the list:

Powerbook 145: Okay, but not great. Battery is basically dead so I can't use it for a whole lot. Shows how far portables have come, though I still like the old-school design (I dreamed for years about getting one, then I did and never used it). Given to a friend's kid for his school use.

Powerbook 520c: Sold to us by a fraud a-hole, needed about $100 in repairs at the time (undisclosed). Once fixed, the two-battery system allowed for CRAZY run-times, like 6-8 hours. A great system because of that, though the build quality, weight, and flimsiness left much to be desired. Parents bought, parents still use.

Powerbook 5300cs: Had all the problems everyone always talks about. Even after those were fixed, the thing was flakey. Eventually the screen died because the ribbon cable became frayed. It was used for a while as a headless laptop (connected to a monitor) but then sat on a shelf. A true lemon. Who knows where it is.

Powerbook 5300c: Bought about a month ago for $35. I know, you think I would have learned from our family's first 5300. This one, so far at least, has been a lot better with a FAR better screen. And, for $35 not too shabby!

Powerbook 1400cs: We shall see, looks like the best designed one, though. Only paid $45!

Compaq 486/75: An amazing computer. Very, very small, color screen, weird scrollball system (don't have the specific model name in front of me) but I used it throughout college as my library beast since it was smallest laptop I had access to. I wrote using PC word, used a PC Card CompactFlash adapter to transfer the files to my mac. Worked very well! Got free from a job.

IBM Thinkpad Pentium 133: Went to my brother, but you've got to give it to IBM for great laptops. Bought off a college roomate for $75 and gave to my brother for Christmas some years back.

[tacojohnellenich]

I've only had 2 laptops (3 computers total)...

I had a Sony Vaio- while it worked fine it was running windows 98 at the time and crashed a lot.

I got an iBook 500 in May of 2001 (ordered it the same day as they announced it). While the vaio got put into its box I posted on some message boards and tried to get some cash for it- I ended up trading it for an iMac 350 for my parents seeing they bought me the iBook.

I don't miss the vaio at all. It was big, slow, and the screen sucked. I never took it anywhere with me. My iBook is an entire diffferent story. I used it just about every day the 1st 2 years of college for taking notes in class. Now I'm in my 3rd year in college (I'm a TC major) and the battery lasts only about 13 minutes- a new one is on my list for christmas.

I've out grown the speed too- I'm getting into serious video, photo, and web design now. I love the portability so I also have the 12" powerbook on my wish list. I want that and a 20" apple display with blutooth keyboard and mouse and I'll be set for 3 more years.

THANK YOU APPLE FOR THIS GREAT LAPTOP!

[PeteWK]

My list is short compared to some people's. I've owned:

1400cs 133
1400c 166
Wallstreet 233 / 14.1 / 512k (rev. b)
Pismo 500 (rev. b) upgraded the cpu from 400
Indigo iBook
iBook 500 origional
Titanium 667 DVI
Powerbook 12in. origional

Still champion for me would be the Pismo. I do use it much anymore but there just wasn't anything it couldn't so at least well.

PeteWK

[machem]

Pismo. Hands down. Maybe my replacement G4 will rival it, but ask me again in two years.

We've owned:

PB G3 Wallstreet 233
iBook Clamshell 266
PB G3 FW Bronze 400
iBook dual USB 700
PB G4 1.25 15" (about to go back to Apple)

In the family:

another iBook clamshell
TiBook 600

[fraeone]

I'm pretty new to the portable world. I'm only on my second laptop, and I bought the first one about nine months ago.

My first laptop: Dell Inspiron 2650. I got it for a great price (somewhere around $800 new) w/ a combo drive, 1.8Ghz P4M, and a 14" screen. I still love the machine, it's very solid, thinner and lighter than Dell's current bargain-priced offerings (though it's still huge), and I've never really had any problems with it. I really like it - but I'm selling it.

I bought a shiny new 12" PB about a week ago, and (at least so far) it's by far the nicest portable I've ever used, let alone owned. It's also my first Mac.

Hurray for the 12" PB