Power Book G3 Pismo Review

One of the best laptops apple has ever made has got to be the Powerbook G3 Pismo. This laptop has been going strong for almost ten years, and is still in use by many today. I am actually writing this article right now on my Powerbook G3 Pismo 500 MHZ with 384 MB of RAM running OS X 10.4.11 Tiger. It runs Tiger pretty well and is quite snappy considering how old it is. You can find these models on eBay for about $100 dollars. This is probably the most upgradeable and expandable Powerbook that Apple ever built.

One of the great things about these laptops is that you can upgrade to 1 GB of RAM and also upgrade the processor to a 550 MHZ G4, making the computer a pretty fast machine. You can also find a 1.0 GHZ G3 processor from time to time on eBay and put that in there if you prefer. The Powerbook G3 Firewire or Pismo can handle two batteries in its bays, and it is easy to swap in a DVD-RW drive for the standard DVD-ROM drive that it comes with. The Pismo is probably one of the easiest laptops to take apart and reassemble as well. It's also a pretty good looking computer and to me I like the design better then any other laptop Apple has ever made, the keyboard is superb as well.

The 14.1 inch LCD is clean and crisp and mine has been fine since I bought it off eBay, the ten year old battery it came with still holds an over an hour charge. It plays DVDs very well, and the fact that its only around 6 pounds is pretty amazing considering that is a ten year old machine. The one thing it doesn't do very well is play streaming video like You Tube. This is because the Pismo only has an 8MB graphics chip, so the Powerbook G3 Firewire isn't that great at playing streaming video, but regular video you download and DVDs are just fine.

The Powerbook G3 500 MHZ Firewire, or "Pismo" named after Pismo Beach, California, comes with two USB 1.1 ports, two Firewire 400 ports, VGA out, S-Video out, an 10/100 megabit Ethernet, and a built in 56k modem. It also has a Mic jack and a headphone jack like every computer ever made has as well. It's been a great computer, and for the price I paid for it, I'm very happy with its performance, and the way it has held up so far.