Replace, Resale or Refurbish? PowerBook Ownership 101 by Remy Davison What's your PowerBook worth? How much has your iBook depreciated since you bought it? Should you upgrade or replace your Mac? Consider the fact that if you (or your company) was wealthy enough to buy a $6,500 PowerBook 5300ce in 1995, that now it's worth maybe a measly $500. And probably less since I started that sentence. The Kanga PowerBook G3 you bought in November 1997 for $5,700 now fetches, what? 800 bucks? If you're lucky. Welcome to the era of the depreciating Mac. Oh sure, Wintel people have been resigned to this fact for a decade. No one seriously advertises a 486 for sale for actual cash/money. You have to pay someone to dispose of 386s. Unless it's a laptop, I seriously doubt whether anyone wants a junky 586 or even a low-end Pentium on their hands. Much less an eye-destroying '14-inch' VGA monitor flickering relentlessly at them at 60Hz. Macs, by contrast, have always held their value. Until recently. Prior to the iMac's release, you could still get a reasonable price for that IIci, that Quadra 950, that LC475 or the 6100/60. Even solid-performing Compacts like the SE/30 were worth a dime or two. The iMac completely transformed the notion of the eminently-resellable Mac. Forever. Suddenly, your horrendously-expensive 7600/200 or 9500/350 was embarrassingly outpaced (if not out-expanded) by the seriously cheap, $1,299 iMac. Not only that, but the iMac's hard drive and VRAM made your beige Power Mac's OEM specification look ludicrously underpowered. And overpriced. Fast forward to May 1999: Apple releases the Lombard PowerBook G3 series. No longer was ownership of a G3 'Book the result of a full and frank discussion with your bank manager. You didn't have to sell your left lung to get a 300-plus MHz PowerBook. Here, for the first time, were high-end Pro portables which didn't cost any more than the comparably-equipped Wintel competition. Better still, they cost about half what their predecessors did. Wallstreets started off cheaply with a 12.1" display and beguiled you with megahertz, storage and screen real estate until you ponied up twice the price of the base model. Now, to add insult to injury, you can buy two base-spec (but high-powered and fully-featured) iBooks for the price of a single TiBook 400. That means both you and your partner can have your own portable and stop playing tug-of-war with the Titanium. Or you could buy an iBook and amass a fairly impressive CD collection overnight with the change. I usually recommend PowerBooks and iBooks to people. Except people who can't afford them. People that need processing power (i.e., bang-for-buck) are told to get desktops. Put it this way: $250 gets you a PowerBook 5300 (a smoking 100MHz of 603e) or a PM 7300/200. I agree the 7300 isn't exactly Miss Colombia, but it gets the job done. But people get too wrapped up in the slinkiness of PowerBooks (some have even been known to stroke the lid) and don't understand that everything to do with PowerBooks, from purchase to peripheral, costs twice as much as a desktop or more. Okay, so maybe that's not so true anymore. But the RAM (on pre-Wallstreet models) is pricey per megabyte, and PC cards (100bT, FireWire, USB) easily double their desktop PCI cousins' sticker shock. Same goes for 2.5" hard drives versus 3.5". Batteries can cost a bomb (ask any 500 series owner), as distinct from the $5.00 3.6-volt Lithium back-up variety on Mac desktops. Power supplies? A lot of folding - especially when you consider the $2 plugs desktops use. SCSI adapters? Special again. HDI-15 for external displays? (on pre-3400 models). That'll cost ya. Break your DVD-ROM drive? Ha ha. No, can't sell you the drive by itself. You'll have to buy the whole kit. Dead display? Only a thousand bucks. It's an LCD, you know. Plus labor, of course. Don't even get me started on the price of expansion bay modules. Now you know why PowerBooks cost so much. Oh, and of course they're cool. Now that every kid in a reversed baseball cap and gigantic shorts has a cell phone, the only way we can distinguish ourselves from the lower primates is by the cool, crisp, sexy, svelt Titanium/Ice/Charcoal portables we swan around with (no offense, but I don't think you can achieve the same effect walking around with a Tangerine iBook. People just stare at you like you've stolen it. So I'm told). But there's one other thing they've forgotten in the heat of a PowerBook moment as they swoon over it: Depreciation. 'Book Value There's no doubt the iBook II will force PowerBook G3 prices downwards. Due to limited supplies trickling into the channels and several weeks' wait on BTOs, the real force of the iBook's aggressive pricing hasn't struck quite yet. The bottom line now is to sell your PB - or original iBook - while you can, if that's what you were planning to do. There are pros and cons to doing this, of course. On the pro side, you'll probably realise better 'Book value than if you wait, say, a few months. On the negative side of the ledger, you'll probably face a stampede of people all frantically auctioning their 'Books on eBay. A similar breakout took place when the Titanium was announced at MacWorld in January (including our beloved Editor at IGM, who put his Pismo 500 on the market). Anyone who ponied up for an iBook in recent weeks (and there aren't many of you, given figures of 55,000 for the last quarter) has just seen their investment drop like a rock. Even the 466 is going to take a huge hit, given that a smaller/lighter/cheaper/faster/better-equipped model has just hit the streets. It's going to be interesting watching the Wallstreet/Lombard/Pismo market though. I know a million people will tell me otherwise, but I don't think Black 'Book owner-drivers are going to be quite satisfied with an iBook. It's just a few chips short of a full bucket. I've had one under my arm for a full week now and it's a very pleasant - and light - little machine. Very solid, nice keyboard. But not eye-catchingly different like the Lime iBook and doesn't feel as solid, in a tactile or visual sense, as the old iBook - although I've no reason to doubt Apple's resilience claims. There's no doubt whatsoever it's a better portable though. And the price makes it a steal. But back to the point. While the iBook's 1024x768 screen is indeed a jewel (think of the PowerBook Duo 280c or 2300c, but I'm doing the iBook a disservice by making the comparison), with even 12-point Times entirely readable without eyestrain, there is a degree of comfortability inherent in the 14.1" PowerBook G3 displays. Moreover, on my favorite topic - expansion bays - the G3 Series still has 'em all beat. A lot of PowerBook owners love the 8-9 hour battery life the dual-bayed G3s give them. The flexibility of even leaving both batteries at home and slotting in a Zip and a floppy. Or slipping in an additional hard drive. I'll bet the farm here: while the original iBooks, 12.1" Wallstreets and cacheless 233MHz PowerBook (and - maybe - the 13.3" first-edition Wallstreets) fall off the resale chart, the high-end Wallstreets, Lombards and Pismos will retain value over and above that of the low-end iceBooks. Why? Because they'll run OS X half-decently (once Apple produces Rage Pro drivers), their displays are still better than the iBook's (in size, if not quality, which is a bit subjective) and they give owners the flexibility they demand. After all, that's what you bought it for, isn't it? Bear in mind too that whatever optical drive you order with the iBook - you're stuck with it. And if you break it...well, I wonder how much Apple will charge you for that little number? For some people, having a mere CD-ROM drive built-in won't be a big deal. Need a CDRW? Hook up a FireWire or (ugh) a USB drive. Zip? Orb? USB or FireWire. Two batteries..? Uh, pack an extra one in your...pack? S-video? Can't be done on an iBook. IrDA to a cell phone or Palm? Forget it. Access to SCSI? Forget it. Compact Flash PC cards? No, you have to buy a USB card reader which costs twice the price of a Compact Flash card (and they're not as fast or convenient). Those are the reasons - among others - that 14.1" Wallstreets, Lombards and Pismos will not fall too substantially from their current price points. Not yet, anyway. Especially as Wallstreet and Lombard owners can upgrade very cheaply and easily to USB and FireWire via the CardBus slot(s). A minor investment, considering the benefits. What's more, given recently-published tests around the web, you will gain nothing in FireWire performance, even with the Oxford 911 bridge chip, by moving to an iBook or Titanium with on-board FireWire (according to some tests, Wallstreet CardBus FireWire outperforms the PowerBook G4 in certain areas! And that's not even close to being funny). Plus there's the performance factor. Okay, I realise that DV, Photoshop and other performance-intensive apps demand peak performance all the time. That means a fast CPU, a big cache and a speedy system bus. The iBook has the first, but not the second or third items. But for general purpose applications (Office, web, printing, email, CD burning) there's absolutely no real, discernible difference between the Wallstreet 250-300, Lombard, Pismo and iBook 500. I'm talking general finder-level stuff, reloading web pages from the cache, previewing Word or Powerpoint presentations or launching Eudora. These G3 'Books are all fast, whichever way you look at it. Frankly, I can't tell a heap of difference between the Wallstreet 233/512 we have here and the iBook 500. Mostly, I'd have measure the extra speed of the iBook in fractions of seconds. I'm not talking power-using the 'Book here; surely that's not the iBook's targeted market. My point here, rather, is how fast can you type? If I happen to be using someone's Pismo 500, sure, I can tell the difference when working in Final Cut Pro between it and a Wallstreet. But not the rest of time. This is a backhanded and convoluted way of saying that G3 PowerBook prices will not hit rock bottom simply because the 500MHz iBook is $1,299. Folks who wanted a PB G4 have (to a large extent) already bought one. Some are saving up. The rest are waiting for a significant speed bump. If you're going to leap from a PB G3, you know what 500MHz feels like. What you want is 600 or 700MHz worth of G4 or G3 in your portable. That's when you'll auction the faithful old 233 Wallstreet on eBay and hand over the folding. When OS X runs really fast on it. And when everything in Classic happens almost instantaneously (when a PowerBook behaves like a G4 desktop, essentially). I'm not slamming the iBook here. The only curses you'll hear are from people who just bought an Indigo one. The iBook is a monster, sure-fire hit. It'll probably make over-inventorised, under-performing and under-featured Dells depreciate more than PowerBooks (which have never lacked features). Hell, the iBook will probably put more downward pressure on the iMac than anything else. Earlier iMacs in particular are beginning to look seriously under-equipped. So What's My Book Worth? Less by the day. What you can get as a trade in and what you'll pay are two different things. But here's a sample of some prices from commercial vendors offering warranties. I'm not linking to vendors here; I'm just giving you an idea of fair market value - not including any extras you want to throw in, of course, which will increase the value. If you want to sell your 'Book on eBay (with no warranty, obviously), here are the ballpark figures you'll want to beat: PowerBook G4/400 (Titanium) < $2,200 PowerBook G3/400 (Lombard): < $1,700 PowerBook G3/333 < $1,500 PowerBook G3/300 (Wallstreet) < $1,450 PowerBook G3/233/512K/12.1" < $800 iBook (FireWire) G3/366/10Gb < $1,000 iBook (original) G3/300/3.2GB < $800 Note the Titanium price. Scarey, isn't it? And if you want to sell your iBook, do it now, before prices plummet further and superseded Tangerines, Blueberries and Indigos flood the market as users upgrade to the new iceBook. The bottom line is that Apple has made performance and features better and cheaper. Apple wants you to trade up to a newer Mac more often. The brutal truth is that Apple made those older Macs so damn good and solid that it burnt them in the end. You paid thousands, so you expected long-term service. And you got it. All those SE/30s and Mac IIs still in service. Stacks of PowerBook 100s and 170s with not even a dead backlight ( I know people who still use them every day). PowerBook 500s (already 7 years old) with the screen bezel plastics glued obstinately back into place as owners find no other fault with the 'Book. The much-maligned and underrated PowerBook 5300 and 190, dirt-cheap used, still chugging along as portable workstations, even if their owners have much newer and far more powerful desktop Macs. 1400 owners who refused to toss their portable and installed a G3 card instead. Fact is, Apple doesn't make a cent out of these owners. Not in the profitable hardware department anyway. You, the faithful Mac user, have to be more like a Wintelian: upgrade every coupla years. Okay? Come on, you know you want to. What's more, you'll enjoy it. Besides, look at our prices now: you can afford it. Right? So your old PowerBook's not worth much anymore. So what? This new iBook's less than half the price and twice as powerful. When all's said and done, there's a powerful logic to the upgrade argument. You sell your 'Book inside two years, get back half what you paid for it and only pay a few hundred bucks more to get the new model. With any joy, you'll be able to swap over your RAM and hard drive and keep using whatever peripherals you have (FireWire, USB). And, if the Wintel market's any guide, you don't want to hang on to that old 'Book too long. After all, what's your PowerBook 1400/117 worth now? Moral: use it until it breaks or upgrade often. Which segues nicely into... To Upgrade or Not To Upgrade? There are people who'll swear the best thing they ever did was buy a 167MHz daughtercard for their PowerBook 500. Or a G3 upgrade for their PowerBook 1400. The best advice, I think, is to "buy what you need when you need it" (as opposed to "buy what you want when you want it"). Upgrading a Wallstreet to faster-than-iBook 500 speeds will cost you less than half the price of a base iBook. PowerLogix will fix you up with 466 or 500MHz replacement daughtercard with a full 1MB of cache on board. Sure, you don't get FireWire, USB or the better video card, but as we've noted, these are available for not much extra. Plus the bonus of keeping all your peripherals (expansion bay modules, power adapters, batteries). Not a bad deal at all. There's meant to be an upgrade for the Lombard in the pipeline. Presumably, when 600MHz-plus G3s become available to PowerLogix, they'll provide a similar upgrade path for Pismo owners. Now I don't usually recommend upgrades. The Apple 100MHz logic board replacements for the 190 were a waste of money, for the most part. Newer's 500-series upgrades were better but not brilliant, in my honest opinion. The 1400 upgrades - and owners might flame me for this - are good, but aren't worth the money. Sorry. The system bus (33MHz) is too slow; the graphics performance lousy; the passive screen models lame; the RAM max ridiculously low (64MB), the battery life piddling (though exceptional by Wintel standards) and the NuBus architecture totally prohibits any use of FireWire, USB or fast SCSI. On the other hand, the PowerLogix (and, until last year, the Newer Technology ones as well) upgrades make economic sense. They preserve hardware investments; they give you all or most of the power of the latest models; and they give your existing 'Book at least an extra year or two's useful life - as well as adding to its value. This has also helped keep the PowerBook G3 Series' price point up. Want to upgrade your iBook? Or Titanium? Ha ha. Think different. Think again. We soldered the CPU to the motherboard again. Yes, just like the 5300, 3400 and Kanga you were forced to replace. So either keep upgrading, or start using an abacus. Oh, and if you do still have that PowerBook Duo 280c, keep it. Antiques are worth a lot. Some day.