Thanks for all the advice, which was nicely complemented yesterday by the appearance on lowendmac of a glowing series of testimonials to the viability of the Pismo as an OSX.3/X.4 machine.
That said, after a week of pondering the options, I just bought one of the aforementioned 12" 1.33GHz iBooks, which in the end suits the need better. The OSX Pismo can wait for another day, or maybe I'll put it together and sell it on to pay for some of the iBook purchase.
In fact I already have a working Pismo running OS9, but it does duty more or less 24/7 at the office, where it runs some bits of Classic software that work so well that I can't see the point of replacing either it or them; the other one was to be for home office use, where I presently need a spare and cheap OSX portable. I do not want to carry the working Pismo back and forth from/to the office, nor do I want to install OSX on it, since (as has been said) I don't have large enough PC100/133 SODIMMs at hand for OSX.
The youngsters and my wife tend to monopolize the other OSX portables in the house (MacBook Pro, 12" PowerBook).
So I did not want a working Pismo for "collection" purposes. I wanted something that would be functional in X.3/X.4 and readily portable. A 12" machine trumps a Pismo on portability, and that, in the end, was what made the decision for me. The Pismo, like this infernal MacBook Pro on which I am writing just now, is just too big to count as genuinely portable in my book (I regret buying the MBP for this reason). If it's too big to carry conveniently, it isn't really a convenience, is it?
At the other end of the great chain of being, Netbooks do not appeal. They are certainly portable, but they are too cut-down for my tastes. I also don't want to get into the hacking racket. Hence the interest in the last of the 12 inchers.
What I may end up doing, however, is "recovering" my 12" 1.5GHz PowerBook from daughter #1 (which I had decanted to her earlier this year for Gr. 11 high school - and immediately regretted losing my "baby" to my baby) by giving her the 12" iBook instead. We'll see if it's shiny enough for that fate once it arrives. I suspect, however, that like most 16 year-olds, she would take the new and the shiny one over the old quite happily.
That said, after a week of pondering the options, I just bought one of the aforementioned 12" 1.33GHz iBooks, which in the end suits the need better. The OSX Pismo can wait for another day, or maybe I'll put it together and sell it on to pay for some of the iBook purchase.
In fact I already have a working Pismo running OS9, but it does duty more or less 24/7 at the office, where it runs some bits of Classic software that work so well that I can't see the point of replacing either it or them; the other one was to be for home office use, where I presently need a spare and cheap OSX portable. I do not want to carry the working Pismo back and forth from/to the office, nor do I want to install OSX on it, since (as has been said) I don't have large enough PC100/133 SODIMMs at hand for OSX.
The youngsters and my wife tend to monopolize the other OSX portables in the house (MacBook Pro, 12" PowerBook).
So I did not want a working Pismo for "collection" purposes. I wanted something that would be functional in X.3/X.4 and readily portable. A 12" machine trumps a Pismo on portability, and that, in the end, was what made the decision for me. The Pismo, like this infernal MacBook Pro on which I am writing just now, is just too big to count as genuinely portable in my book (I regret buying the MBP for this reason). If it's too big to carry conveniently, it isn't really a convenience, is it?
At the other end of the great chain of being, Netbooks do not appeal. They are certainly portable, but they are too cut-down for my tastes. I also don't want to get into the hacking racket. Hence the interest in the last of the 12 inchers.
What I may end up doing, however, is "recovering" my 12" 1.5GHz PowerBook from daughter #1 (which I had decanted to her earlier this year for Gr. 11 high school - and immediately regretted losing my "baby" to my baby) by giving her the 12" iBook instead. We'll see if it's shiny enough for that fate once it arrives. I suspect, however, that like most 16 year-olds, she would take the new and the shiny one over the old quite happily.