Not all of my interesting antique computers are Apples; I have a few other things that I used back in the day, usually for work, that are pretty interesting…
For instance, back in the late 90’s “The Internet” wasn’t just a communications medium – it was also an aesthetic!
Check out the groovy “4 way Internet Scroll Button” under the touch pad, and right under the display is the “Internet Zone” with dedicated buttons for ‘instant internet access’, ‘instant email’, and ‘retail central’ – an “Instant connection to your favorite computer store and a variety of popular retail sites at the touch of a button”.
Oh, and MP3s were still a big deal, so this has a dedicated MP3 player that works even if the laptop is off. And it actually sounds pretty good for a y2k laptop…
I picked this up in July of 2000 for something like $2000 at CompUSA because I needed a Windows PC to develop the DirectX stuff I was working on, but I was living on a fifty foot yacht and space was a premium. The big reason I bought this laptop, other than it was ‘rad’ looking, is it had a DVD drive, a Trident “CyberBlade” AGP video card, and USB 2.0 (!) in it – all of which were useful for the digital video stuff I was working on.
This came with a Pentium III at 650mhz, a 13.3″ TFT display (that still looks pretty good), 64 megs of PC100 RAM, a 6 gig IDE HD, a 56k Modem / Ethernet card, and Windows ME (Millennium Edition).
As you can see by the photo, I added a 256M SODIMM to it, which is the most it’ll take (the video uses 8 megs of system ram, which is why the ram count looks weird), and it got an upgrade to a 20G HD some time in the past.
The only real issue this laptop has is the battery crapped out about a decade ago. And while I can get a replacement for about $50, it’s just not been that big of a deal for what amounts to a conversation piece.
Listening to "The Comeback Kid" by The Midnight