MacIntosh PowerBook Duo 230

This really isn't my computer. It's my wife's and she's had it from new. She bought it in graduate school to do her word processing on. She's a gadget head just like I am--she's the only woman I ever met that had a better stereo than I did. I think this machine probably qualified as a gadget when she bought it.

The Mac Duo is a very small PowerBook laptop and docking station combo. The PowerBook 230 seems to be a pretty capable little laptop, but pared down to the barest of minimums. The display is black and white, there's no floppy drive, and it's not super-fast. These handicaps are all made up for and then some by the DuoDock. The DuoDock is a docking station that has a color video card, expansion slots, the capability of expansion HDDs, a floppy drive and a bevy of other peripherals that stay connected to it while the laptop part is out roaming around. It's a really cool idea and quite a powerful one as well.

This thing is still functional, just like the other old laptops I own. This one is even more so, because I could attach a SCSI HDD in the dock and get by the very small 120Mb or so HDD on board the PowerBook. I have stuck an Ethernet card in the box, so it is on my little home network, but because of it never being installed, there's no decent comm program I can use to get her files off that machine and on to the network where they can be backed up.

I know a lot more about the hardware of this system, as I've had to replace the power supply on the dock twice and I've also had the thing open to install the Ethernet card. I'd like to play with this machine a little more as it has the only printer jack that will connect to this color printer a friend of mine gave to me. It's just a matter of time, just like everything else, right?