I have owned previous Macs. First, I had the 6100/8/160. That was a PowerMac running a Motorola chip. I think I eventually upgraded that one to 16 megabytes of ram or something, which probably cost a few hundred dollars. Then I slapped on Connectix’ RamDoubler control panel to top out at a screaming (virtual) 32 Megs!

I bought a couple of used Quadra 840AVs for my old shop, in order to do inventory on a little appletalk network. Those were actually great machines. They handled little bits of audio and video and were pretty fast for the era, with cool speakers built into the monitors.

I owned a Powerbook 190 as well. This was good for writing and some simple things like home accounting software and hypercard stack development, etc.

At some point, I got a great deal on a 250 MHz PowerBook (WallStreet) that had been tricked out. I paid $250 for it and it came with receipts showing that it was actually worth up to $4000! But it was dead. It would not power up.  I finally figured out, and the internets have since confirmed this fact, that the 20 gig hard drive expansion was creating a magnetic field that was tripping the sleep sensor into a constant sleep mode. It was really only a startup problem. Now I just carry a Kid Rock ‘American Badass’ refrigerator magnet bottle opener and wave it over the hard drive/sleep sensor before I turn it on. (Hmm, can’t find that bottle opener online to link a picture, maybe it is rare-ish.) Anyways, I was able to install OSX on this laptop as well as Yellow Dog Linux but could not get it onto a wireless network for days. Turns out that all I had to do was liberate the card from inside of an old Airport homebase (thanks Claudia!) and it will go wireless in Classic system 9 mode.

I almost forgot the iMac DV Special Edition that I used for years. Funny. This was a great machine once I bought an external Firewire disc burner.

A few years back I bought a Mac Mini also. It is fine, although a little bit noisy.

Whew! I didn’t realize that would go so long. I just wanted to let y’all know that when it comes to Macs, I know my stuff.

The 20″  iMac Intel Penryn then…iLike it! The brushed metal housing which contains the hard and disc drives as well as the LCD monitor is a thing of simple beauty. The thing moves quickly at the stock 1 gig of ram level. iJust checked and it seems that iCan switch that out for 4 gigs for about $50!!! iLife is fine. iHaven’t decided between iWork and openoffice yet. iWill likely buy Apple Logic for sound recording. If you haven’t ever bought a Mac, now is probably the time. Things seem much simpler in this era of Macs running on Intel processors. Are there still people that haven’t bought a Mac ever? Never ever ever?! Come on now.

I will report back once the full set of ram is installed and I have purchased (um, or just received in the mail by some odd chance…anyone…anyone?) Logic.