A few years back, I was knocking around on the Powerbook newsgroups when a new guy posted some basic questions about getting into retro Macs. Evidently, he had a shot at a pretty good deal on a Powerbook 5300ce from an estate sale, but he asked, "Is this a good notebook? What can I do with it?". Amongst the responses was one bit sage who I think summed it up nicely; he said, "It'll do everything today that it could do when it was new out of the box.". A simple answer, but it really got me thinking. Old technology doesn't change, it's how we use it that changes, and if you're interested in hobbying with an old notebook, it's less a matter of what you CAN do with it, as it is what you WILL do with it. Yeah, you're not going to be hitting YouTube on a Powerbook 180, but you can desktop publish, word processing, do gif animations, keep business records, and write the great American Novel. Old powerbooks make great starter computers for the kids, or a second family machine, letting you get a little work done as the girls run amuck in Second Life on the main computer in the house. It's also convenient to have a computer that can be easily picked up and tucked away, there's no need to dedicate desk space to a big setup, and given that MOST of the Pre-G4 Apple notebooks are WiFi capable, you have even more options! Coming up, I'll tell you as much as I can about the hows and whys of RetroBooking. Enjoy!