Unlucky PowerBook Pegged By Foul Ball

Here's something you never want to happen to your laptop: a foul ball squarely pegging it during a major league ball game. More »

Ebay Powerbook Comes with Free 100 Hours of Pornography

So you're trying to sell a "like new" Powerbook G4 on eBay. What makes your Powerbook any more enticing than the next guy's? How about 50 preoloaded full-length porno flicks?

Would You Buy Steve Wozniak's PowerBook on eBay?

Looks like Apple Employee #1's old 17", maxed-out PowerBook is for sale on eBay, remarkably devoid of Cheetos fingerprints. But who acquired it from Woz to begin with? The answer might surprise you. More »

IKEA + Apple = Mamebook Cocktail

A MAME (arcade) cabinet will easily cost you several hundred to several thousand dollars. But one modder used a little ingenuity to take an old PowerBook with snapped hinges and fit it into an IKEA RAMVIK shelving unit. The result is a tabletop arcade machine á la Galaga and Pac-Man that fits in a modern home. Here's the funny shot that tells you it's an Apple: More »

Apple's Sparking Power Supply Lawsuit Settled (Verdict: They're Paying)

The class action lawsuit brought against Apple for PowerBook and iBook power bricks with the potential to spark has been settled. If the final approval for the settlement goes through, Apple will pay $25 to $79 to customers who "bought an adapter made by Apple or another company to replace a failed one." [LA Times, photo from Don Ramsey]

Laptop Accelerometers Used to Study Earthquakes, Desk "Bumping"

Seismologists at Stanford are learning from their roommates over in the biology department and rigging up a distributed computing system to gather quake data from laptops with accelerometers. It's used to save resources for scientists by using assets (your laptops) that are already deployed in a widespread area. They're rolling this out primarily in quake-heavy areas like SF and LA, but should be spreading to other zones later. More »

Old, Beaten PowerBook Reborn as Shiny, New Desktop

If your otherwise perfectly functional PowerBook has fallen apart from rough handling, many would either pay big bucks for a new screen or just replace the computer outright. But one modder had a better idea: gut the components to create a sleek desktop system. More »

Really like reddit.com? Buy the two Apple G4 PowerBooks that helped code it so you can lick the keyboard and hope some of their juice rubs off onto your own project. [eBay]

Letterman's Producer Survives Sparky, Smelly, Smoky Powerbook

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MacTruck Laptop Case for Clumsy Apple Fanboys

So, Lord Steve of Jobsworth carries his Lenovo in leather does he? Cough. I reckon he's more likely to use this, the MacTruck case (not that I am saying that you are clumsy, your Lordship, oh no, I am waiting for a SF ballet company to debut Black Turtleneck, the story of Jobs told through the language of contemporary dance). More »

FastMac Truepower Indestructible iBook and Powerbook Charger Hands-On

We got our hands on FastMac's replacement AC adapter for Apple iBooks and PowerBooks and can say that they're pretty much as good as the standard. Ignoring the dubious benefit of being able to be kicked and run over by an SUV (which you can see after the jump), they actually work quite well. More »

Apple To Debut Sub-Notebook At WWDC: NAND, No Optical Drive?

Apple will launch a new sub-notebook computer at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, which is scheduled to start on June 11. Well, so says those rumormongers over at AppleInsider. The sub-notebook looks to be Apple's first to come with NAND solid state flash drives instead of a traditional hard drive. This translates to faster boot ups and smaller size, in addition to reduced power consumption. The sub-notebook might also be without an optical drive, but that's not set in stone yet (as much as rumors can be "set in stone"). Think of the computer as the spiritual successor to the PowerBook 2400, pictured here. More »

The Melted G4 Powerbook: Part 3

Once was a stretch. Twice was a coincidence. Three times? It's an epidemic. Reader Angus apparently had the same (melted) problems as our other two readers. More »

Pimp My Ride Tech-Loads a Celica Like a Newbie

Last night Pimp My Ride tricked out a 1990 Toyota Celica with big wheels, flashy paint, 2 terabytes of space, a 17" Powerbook, iPod nano,7" touch screen, & a Tr o 650. Yawn...what, no WiFi access point? Newbs. More »

Powerbook Laser Etching Revisited

Our sister from a different motha, Gina over at Lifehacker, got her Powerbook etched with a celtic knot this past weekend at the MAKE headquarters as part of the FOO Camp. She was nice enough to make a video of the very boring process in action. More »

The Frankenstein PowerBook

MacRumors forum user Baxterbrittle was obviously feeling a bit jealous of the new MacBook Pros, so he decided to hack a hi-def 1920 by 1200 screen into his old G4 Powerbook. He describes it as the frankenbook, and claims that the hacks took only a couple of hours and cost only a couple of hundred bucks. – Richard Baguley More »

DIY PowerBook e-Book Reader

Sony Reader, Schmony Reader. Who needs one of those devices when you can turn your Powerbook into an e-Book reader. Sure, even reading this text could be considered reading an e-Book, but does your laptop or desktop machine look like an actual book? No, so stfu! More »

Another PowerBook Mel Gibsons

Another horror story of a PowerBook meltdown comes to you from a guy who woke up to an apartment full of smoke and a laptop on fire. More »

Apple Powerbooks Eksploderer Too

It looks like Dells aren't the only laptops on the block to catch fire. Employees in Kristiansand "got an unpleasant surprise when the battery In their 12" Powerbook G4 laptop suddenly caught fire yesterday." More »

Worst. Laser. Etching. Ever.

More like laser retching (*rimshot*)! This laser etched Powerbook with a word cloud of Web 2.0 terms has got to be the worst thing we've ever seen. Worse than goatse and definitely worse than tubgirl. But it may be tied with that goatse/tubgirl mashup that made us vomit up two day's worth of beans. Oh god, here it comes again. – Jason Chen More »

Cleverest Laser Etched Powerbook Yet

Etching the Son of Man on the back of an Apple Powerbook? That's pure genius. If we were this smart we would have gotten more from the insurance pay-out from burning down the old Gawker HQ. Also, we wouldn't have just revealed that we committed insurance fraud. C'est la vie. – Jason Chen More »

The Truth Behind Back-Alley NYC Powerbook Resellers

If you are dumb enough to buy a Powerbook in an alley by a liquor store in New York City then maybe you are meant to be an Apple owner. Zing! Just kidding Jobs, you know me love you long time. More »

DIY Digital Photo Frame (Powerbook Version)

If you've got a Powerbook with snapped hinges lying around like we do, Instructables has a great step-by-step tutorial with photos on how to turn it into a hanging digital painting. Photo of stuffed Moose not included, sadly. More »

What a Rotten Apple

It seems someone absconded with a PowerBook during a recent daylight heist of an Apple Store. The security cable was apparently cut and the thief slipped under the radar. Perhaps Apple Store employees missed the giant neon sign the culprit was wearing: Will Steal Merchandise if Left Unattended. More »

Hookers Always Get The Best Powerbooks

Meet a dude who goes by the alias Vonguard. He's a man of shrewd business, schooled in the trade, and knows how to make a deal. You see, one day in October of 2002, a hooker (dubbed "Twister") traded him a brand new, shiny Apple Powerbook Titanium for only $100. Originally she asked for $200 but by the time Vonguard went and got his money, she was in a hurry to get going. Since the purchase the Powerbook has been working nicely for him. He's upgraded it with a 40GB hard drive, a DVD burner, and tons of awesome stickers (adds 15mhz per sticker, just like a Honda Civic!). Want to do him a favor? You can own this nostalgic piece by trading a new MacBook Pro for his TiBook. Let us know if you've ever gotten a better deal than Best Buy through a hooker. More »

Upgrading Your 12-inch Powerbook for Fun and Profit

Hardmac ran an interesting upgrade article and one valiant reader took the plunge and cracked the hermetically-sealed titanium beast. After installing a DVD burner, a gigabyte of RAM, and a sassy new hard drive, he pulled the speaker cable out of the thing and had to use a soldering iron to put it back together. Luckily, he now has a tricked out Powerbook rather than a hunk of shiny metal. [Thanks, Daniel] More »

More Apple Stuff in the Works?

Ok, we're done with Apple for today after this post. We'll cover kitchen timers or something, because I'm all Jobs'ed out. Anyway, expect PowerMac and PowerBook updates soon because Apple is pulling its retail force together for another update on the 15th, which means there may be a smaller announcement later this month or in November. More »

Sonnet Offering TiBook Upgrade Service

Sonnet has only been offering DIY CPU-upgrade kits for mac users up until now. If you've got an old 550mhz or 667mhz TiBook around and $500 to blow, you're set. Sonnet will now offer a 1.2ghz upgrade for the TiBook with 512k of L2 onboard cache. Sonnet insists they do the upgrade though do the complexity of the powerbook. Trust them on this. More »

iDog

All this talk of Apple problems must have made Clancy, a Brooklyn-based Soft Coated Wheaton, hungry. What we see here is an X-ray of wee Clancy's insides complete with severed Powerbook cord. Luckily Clancy made it through sans incident.[Thanks, Marc!]

Apple's Powerbook G4 - Dead Man Walking?

Rumors are flying that Apple is giving their Powerbook G4 lineup one last run around the track before sending it to the glue factory. Word has it that the last updates will include high density displays with a native resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels, a 30mhz speed bump, DDR2 RAM, and a written apology from Apple for keeping the Powerbook G4 around long enough for me to care. More »