PB190, is it the worst? (Probably).

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Back to the 190 topic: I like the 190 more than the 5300 because there's cubic under the trackpad to rip out the damn thing and install a Duo TrackBall. [}] Gotta take another look at that one now that we've got 3D printing available for hacking. The 5300 has gobs of power supply components underneath the trackpad, no can do.

At one point I hacked a CD into a PatioPaverBook, it will fit, but you lose the foot on that side and have to remove much of the section between floppy and battery. Never got around to making the adapter to hook it up, the physical challenge was the journey that mattered.

Brick or Block doesn't sound like it looks right for these clunky things. Take a look at some of the pavers next time you're at a big box. I swear if you took two of them, cut a little over a half inch off the top of one paver to use as the lid and a bit less than half inch off the bottom of the other to flip it over for the base unit you'd have a 190 in hand, Flintstone style!

 

[ArmorAlley]

The PB190 was the first Mac I ever bought new. My brother had bought a Performa 475 and I had bought a thirdhand Plus some years' previously.

It was August 1996 and I only bought the PB190 new because the PB1400 had just come out and the PB190 was being sold off at half-price (and I'm a sucker for a bargain). It cost 20 man yen rather than 40 man yen. JPY200,000 yen today is USD1840.

Akihabara is a great place to be at sales time. To give a rough sense of value, my monthly salary as an assistant English teacher in chuugakkou in Japan was 30-man yen. Before that I couldn't justify spending more than a month's salary (before tax) on an item that would be useful but not that useful. I didn't need it for work and second IIcxs could be bought at Sofmap (anyone who has been there will know the jingle - I have been scarred for life) for 10-man yen. So it was an impulse buy. I really wanted a PB540c or a Duo but they were over 50 man yen.

I found the PB190 to be a great machine. It seemed fast for the time. The big trade off was PPC software. It was the last 68K mac and I was fully aware that soon there would be no new software available for it. This didn't bother me. I had the games I wanted, I had most of the Claris suite (MacWrite Pro is still my favourite text-editor), I had Quark Xpress 3.32.

 

[AlpineRaven]

Growing up - I had PowerBook 190cs and later upgraded to 5300cs, later found 5300ce sold it all off (regretted!)

Last year I obtained two PowerBook 190s and both are working well.

About 4 years ago I did obtain PowerBook 5300cs and it just crumbled into pieces - very bad plastics and it had battery cancer as well.

190s/5300s did not have CD ROM - I used to use external CD/CDRW.

I also have couple of 3400c including Japanese version. Love it but the plastics is also brittle as well and I rather minimise using it.
Cheers

AP

 

[sstaylor]

I was working the computer department of a college bookstore at the time of the 1400, and Apple made kind of a big deal about the cover and how much it was likely to appeal to college students.  I don't recall whether it actually did or not.

 

[Cory5412]

IIRC the bookcover thing was mentioned in the mags as a marketing ploy aimed at attracting younger, non-business users

That's an interesting take on it, and I can very see it.

The 1400 was definitely at least ultimately positioned downward, but I've seen lots of different suggestions for the BookCovers, and it of course comes with a plain black one for someone who might not want to use the feature.

For what it's worth, here's a dealer talking points/datasheet: http://www.vectronicscollections.org/gallery/ads/laptop/0049.php - from relatively early on in the system's life. The 133MHz CPU had been added, but the 8/12x CD drives hadn't, for example. I also think it's interesting the 1400/2400 (and I believe 3400 but I haven't seen its dealer sell sheet floating around) included ClarisWorks.

ISTR that for a while the LowendBook was the 5300, 1400 the mid-range pro-sumer Book with the 3400c being the flagship of the PowerBook line.

This is incorrect. The 5300 was discontinued in August 1996 and the 1400 was introduced in August 1996. The 190, interestingly, stayed on sale for longer, until October 1, 1996.

The 3400c was introduced February 1997, and the 2400c was introduced even further after that in May 1997.

Per EveryMac - the Duo 2300c was discontinued in February 1997, but I'm not 100% sure how true that is, in that: I don't remember seeing it discussed much at all in the 1996 MacAddicts I've seen. Perhaps it's time to download 1996 MacWorld and look through it.

Depending on the status of the Duo, this might mean that Apple was in effect not selling a PowerPC PowerBook at all for a hot couple months. And even if you could get the Duo, it didn't have PCMCIA and you needed to add docking to it, so buying one in 1996 arguably only made sense if you were upgrading an existing ecosystem with a new machine.

The gotcha is, and I haven't seen, like, Zones/Warehouse etc catalogs from before mid-1997, is that resellers weren't really allowed to advertise prices in magazines until fairly late on. I believe 1998 is when I started seeing the bigger ones do it. I don't know what their own catalogs were like at that point, however.

It probably wasn't until the G3 Series shipped that students were taking a laptop to all their classes, if many did even then?

Maybe!

However: the original PBG3 was introduced at $5,700, followed up by the G3 Series, which started at $2,299.

The original (Kanga) was of course basically a revision of the 3400c. The G3 Series could run dual batteries, so it's certainly more practical to do all-day meetings or classes with a G3 series machine.

I suspect that the iBook was the real start of "consumer" market buyers being reasonably able to buy laptops. A college kid might have bought a laptop in the '90s, but in reality I suspect few did. Even moreso, I don't think laptops in classrooms (at least in higher ed) were common until well into the 2000s. Like I said, the crossover for "more students bought laptops than desktops" is 2006.

I was working the computer department of a college bookstore at the time of the 1400, and Apple made kind of a big deal about the cover and how much it was likely to appeal to college students.  I don't recall whether it actually did or not.

Good to know! Apple's general marketing materials don't call out college students specifically, but they do call out the customizeability as part of the 1400 having been an attempt to build a machine suitable for a variety of different buyers. (Basically, here's a system, add whatever you need to it to make it what you need.)

Do you happen to recall in general what proportion of desktops to laptops you were selling?

 

[Cory5412]

IIRC the bookcover thing was mentioned in the mags as a marketing ploy aimed at attracting younger, non-business users

That's an interesting take on it, and I can very see it.

The 1400 was definitely at least ultimately positioned downward, but I've seen lots of different suggestions for the BookCovers, and it of course comes with a plain black one for someone who might not want to use the feature.

For what it's worth, here's a dealer talking points/datasheet: http://www.vectronicscollections.org/gallery/ads/laptop/0049.php - from relatively early on in the system's life. The 133MHz CPU had been added, but the 8/12x CD drives hadn't, for example. I also think it's interesting the 1400/2400 (and I believe 3400 but I haven't seen its dealer sell sheet floating around) included ClarisWorks.

ISTR that for a while the LowendBook was the 5300, 1400 the mid-range pro-sumer Book with the 3400c being the flagship of the PowerBook line.

This is incorrect. The 5300 was discontinued in August 1996 and the 1400 was introduced in August 1996. The 190, interestingly, stayed on sale for longer, until October 1, 1996.

The 3400c was introduced February 1997, and the 2400c was introduced even further after that in May 1997.

Per EveryMac - the Duo 2300c was discontinued in February 1997, but I'm not 100% sure how true that is, in that: I don't remember seeing it discussed much at all in the 1996 MacAddicts I've seen. Perhaps it's time to download 1996 MacWorld and look through it.

Depending on the status of the Duo, this might mean that Apple was in effect not selling a PowerPC PowerBook at all for a hot couple months. And even if you could get the Duo, it didn't have PCMCIA and you needed to add docking to it, so buying one in 1996 arguably only made sense if you were upgrading an existing ecosystem with a new machine.

The gotcha is, and I haven't seen, like, Zones/Warehouse etc catalogs from before mid-1997, is that resellers weren't really allowed to advertise prices in magazines until fairly late on. I believe 1998 is when I started seeing the bigger ones do it. I don't know what their own catalogs were like at that point, however.

It probably wasn't until the G3 Series shipped that students were taking a laptop to all their classes, if many did even then?

Maybe!

However: the original PBG3 was introduced at $5,700, followed up by the G3 Series, which started at $2,299.

The original (Kanga) was of course basically a revision of the 3400c. The G3 Series could run dual batteries, so it's certainly more practical to do all-day meetings or classes with a G3 series machine.

I suspect that the iBook was the real start of "consumer" market buyers being reasonably able to buy laptops. A college kid might have bought a laptop in the '90s, but in reality I suspect few did. Even moreso, I don't think laptops in classrooms (at least in higher ed) were common until well into the 2000s. Like I said, the crossover for "more students bought laptops than desktops" is 2006.

I was working the computer department of a college bookstore at the time of the 1400, and Apple made kind of a big deal about the cover and how much it was likely to appeal to college students.  I don't recall whether it actually did or not.

Good to know! Apple's general marketing materials don't call out college students specifically, but they do call out the cus

 

[sstaylor]

Do you happen to recall in general what proportion of desktops to laptops you were selling?

As I recall, we sold lots more desktops than laptops.  At the time, not many students took laptops to class though I think some did; it could have something to do with the fact that the batteries weren't going to last more than a couple of class sessions and one couldn't count on having an outlet available.  That, and the bang for the buck was better with a desktop as far as speed, expandability, hard drive size, etc.

Also, our student population tended to be from the local area, lived at home and commuted to the college, rather than living in the dorms.  Seems like a laptop was often a better proposition for students living in the dorms.

 

[Solvalou]

Does anyone know if the 5300 parts are interchangeable with the 190? I.E. RAM and video output upgrades?

 

[Scott Baret]

I believe the RAM is the same since they share the same connector. I'm not sure about video though.

 

[Cory5412]

The 190/C share a service manual, this part appears to be common between both of them.

http://tim.id.au/laptops/apple/powerbook/powerbook_190.5300.pdf

Seems like a laptop was often a better proposition for students living in the dorms.

I'm curious about this. At my institution, 2006 or there-abouts is reported as the point at which that flipped. Dorms are small, but in my experience, when I got to school (in 2006) most of the rooms would easily have fit a desktop with a 17-inch display, even if it was a little inconvenient (i.e. you might have a tower at your feet or have to set a desktop beside the display instead of under it.) I did so, myself. The biggest bummer in that scenario really is that this was using built-ins. The building I lived in later had separated desks and large displays fit handily with the hutch removed, although you'd be fairly close to, say, a 20-inch CRT unless you pulled out your desk, so it would still be a inconvenient. (I actually did have a 20-inch CRT at some point during college, and it was, in fact, inconvenient - I had to put it and the system that I used it with on a dresser instead of my main desk.)

It seems like to a certain extent it might also depend on the institution and when a particular building was built. Most of the halls built in the '60s to the '80s where I went to school were fairly generously sized, even considering that the potential for things like computers wasn't a thing when they were new. I've seen some instituions with much newer buildings with much smaller rooms.

 

[Solvalou]

I believe the RAM is the same since they share the same connector. I'm not sure about video though.

Thanks, I bought some RAM as that's the hunch I got and it's now 16MB more healthy.

One issue I am having is trying to get my external 600e Plus SCSI drive to talk to it, via a MediaVision adapter. Does anyone know why it isn't appearing on the desktop? Tried different ID's to no avail.

Also I got a Stylewriter desktop printer stuck on the desktop. Not a big deal but kinda annoying that I can't seem to figure out how to remove it.

Googling is a waste of time, just giving me OSX and Windows 7 results even using all the keywords I can think of.

 

[sstaylor]

I'm curious about this.

I worked there from about '87-'99, and I'm just recalling observing at the time that it seemed most of the people looking at laptops were in the dorms.  These dorms would have been built in the 60's or possibly late 50's.  I never saw inside them, but it's my understanding that they had a bunch of built-ins.  Could have been cramped, which I think was my assumption at the time.  Or it could have been all the dorm-dwellers telling each other they needed notebooks.

Honestly, with memory being what it is I may be misremembering and I don't have (and didn't have then) anything approaching data.  So it goes...

 

[tappdarden]

The PB190 was the first Mac I ever bought new.

It was August 1996 and I only bought the PB190 new because the PB1400 had just come out and the PB190 was being sold off at half-price

Same for me. The only reason why i was able to afford it was from having a paper route and had been saving for a long time. Once it went on sale I jumped on it.

within the first year the mouse button broke and the headphone jack snapped off. Any complaints that it was cheaply made and broke easily is probably deserved.

That said i have a lot of memories of finally having my own computer and not have to worry about the rules from my dad. I could download what i wanted from BBS's and risk getting a virus if i wanted to. (and i did)

much to my regret i have NO memory to what i did with that laptop. Did i sale it on ebay? traded it for something on craigslist?

 

[tappdarden]

double posted .....