[DuoList] Am I a traitor?

[Josh Keady]

I've been using a 2400 for about 4 years now, my first one was just a  
stock 2400c/180, and when it died, I upped to one that had been  
upgraded to a Newer Tech 240 MHz G3 with 80 MB of RAM, 6 GB hard  
drive, a Cisco 802.11b card, and OS 9.1.  I'm a junior in college and  
while it's kind of fun to whip out my 'vintage' subnote in the  
library (I get a lot of comments on it, actually, and they're not all  
sarcastic :-), it has been giving me some serious hard-freezes lately  
and I suspect the RAM is failing (or worse.)

So today I got on evilBay and bought a 12" PowerBook G4.  I've wanted  
one ever since they were released but never could justify moving to  
one from my 2400, but today was the day.  I'm not selling the 2400  
just yet, it will probably go to my brother, but I felt like I had to  
share.  In my computing life, I've owned a Duo 230, 2300c, eMate,  
PowerBook 540c, and 2 2400cs.  The 2400 is easily my favorite  
portable out of that list, with the Duo 2300c running a close  
second.  The 540c was a total clunker which I just never really liked  
(totally turned me off of "full-size" notebooks), and the 230 was my  
first laptop so it holds some sort of place in my heart.

Just for the sake of talking about it, my 2400 is card-bussed, runs  
9.1, Netscape 7.2, OE 5.1, Office 98, and it keeps up with modern  
uses pretty well.  Netscape is okay at rendering CSS pages (iCab had  
too many problems when last I used it, but it would be a more viable  
alternative than IE) and has tabs, Outlook isn't bad, Office 98 can  
still open pretty much anything that is thrown at it, and with the  
Cisco card plugged in, I can get a little over an hour of use on the  
battery while surfing the internet.  One of the drawbacks of the  
Cisco card is that it doesn't have any WPA support which is getting  
more and more common, plus I find that Open Transport doesn't always  
play nicely with the card and I will end up with an "incomplete" DHCP  
lease once in a while (all of the addresses will be fine, except the  
DNS address will be a self-assigned 169.* number).  I also have had  
good luck with the D-Link DFE-690TXD ethernet card, and way back  
before I had broadband, a USR 56k modem.  Aside from the now  
annoyingly frequent hard freezes, I've had a lot of luck with that  
configuration and have been able to use it as my only laptop for  
quite a while.  Thought I'd list what's worked for me in case anyone  
else is trying to come up with a good configuration.  I have heard  
that OS 8.6 is better for these machines, but I have had good luck  
with 9.1.  I tried to up to 9.2 once upon a time, and I'm embarrassed  
to say that it was a miserable failure.  I don't quite remember why I  
wanted to do it in the first place.

So in the next few days I have to back up the ol' 2400 and get it  
ready for the new owner.  I still have a few 2400 parts at my  
parents' house, next time I'm down I may snag them and offer them up  
for sale, if anyone would want that.  Either the board or processor  
is bad, though.

Anyway, I thought if anyone would understand my sort of bittersweet  
departure from the Duo / 2400 scene it would be this list.  Hug your  
PowerBook tonight. :-)

Josh