Hooray for free Apple hardware! (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

Last week my colleague Albert mentioned that he had some old Apple hardware lying around that he needed to get rid of. Since the thing was still working, he though it a shame to just throw it away and so he was looking for a good home for the thing. Loving Apple classics I naturally obliged :)

I'm saying "classic" here, because the Powerbook 540c in question is supposedly one of the best laptops Apple's ever made. At the time (1994) it was nigh on revolutionary, with all kinds of features that'd never been seen before in a laptop. The 540c was even voted #2 Best Powerbook, right after the venerable Pismo G3.

As Albert promised, the Powerbook still runs perfectly well. It's got OS 7.5 on it and Word and Excel are even installed. Unfortunately one of the batteries is shot to pieces, while the other will still hold a nominal charge. I reckon this laptop will make a nice, first computer for our daughter to play games on in a few years. I'll just have to hope that the SCSI drive in it will hold out.

There's all kinds of improvements that I'm thinking of for this beasty. For one, I'm thinking of recelling the working battery with new NiMH batteries. I'm also looking for a way to get the laptop to work with Compact Flash cards. On the one hand this will make file exchange a lot easier and on the other it will make a perfect replacement for the SCSI drive. Apparently the 540 is perfectly capable of booting from a CF card. Unfortunately both of these improvements will cost at least a bunch of bucks apiece and for now I'm not at liberty to just spend money on old hardware.

Thanks Albert! You gave us a nice little plaything. We'll take good care of your old laptop :)

Posted in: apple , free , powerbook , powerbook 540c

Cool Stuff Review - GelaSkins (The Mighty Squid's Ink) by Mighty_Squid

GelaSkins are removable "stickers" to customize your iPod or your laptop.

I bought 3 different styles for my iPod with video as well as my old 12" Powerbook to take advantage of their buy 4 get one free deal.

Here is one applied to my iPod, one package and one contents of package. (You can click for a larger image.)



Here is the Powerbook Skin.



On the Powerbook.



It's very easy to remove with nothing left on the laptop.



The stickers are high quality, look great and are very easy to apply. I was concerned that it would be difficult to apply to some of the smaller areas such as the click button on the center of the iPod wheel but it was fairly easy even for someone like me who doesn't have fine motor control. The included screen protector was the best I've seen in ease of application and the lack of any bubbles.

They were a bit expensive. The iPod skins were 14.95 USD and the 12' Powerbook skin was a whopping 32.95 USD. However it does do an excellent job of protecting my old already scratched up laptop and you can't be to careful with those video iPod screens.

I've also gotten numerous compliments on my iPod from co-workers and envious (at least I thought they were envious) stares from folks on the train.

If you are looking for a great way to customize your tech toys without damaging them then GelaSkins might just be a great way to do it. Posted in: apple , customize , gelaskins , ipod , powerbook , review , skin