Retro [geek] Corner - F**k iPad - here is $4110 Powerbook!

Today in Retro [geek] Corner, I will present you an ultimate machine that was kicking ass in 1992 - Apple Macintosh Powerbook 180 Laptop (!), which has been recently discovered by Marc in the dungeons and kindly made available to me (thanks Marc!).

When you watched the most recent Keynote from iPad launch, Steve Jobs presented a slide in one moment, showing the first laptop that was ever released (see Photo below). Then it all went down, but lets wait with the full judgment for iPad until I put my hand on this device.


So today we back in time to 1992, with one of the first series of laptops ever released - Powerbook 180. It was worth $4110 (£2635) at the time of release. $4110!!! It had Motorola MC processor running with stunning 33 Mhz, 4MB of RAM, 80 MB of hard drive, and 1.4 Floppy Drive. This 3.1 kilogram gray beauty (Photo) had amazing 10" grayscale LCD screen with maximum 4-bit resolution of 640x400. It had speaker, microphone (all mono), SCSI port, and some other esoteric ports (1 x ADI, 2 x mini DIN-8), and was running Mac OS 7.1, with games like puzzle and... other stuff like Word. It was 5.5 cm thick comparing to 2.5 cm of my 5 years old Macbook Pro (Photo). It was a $4110 gray beast with trackball (Photo) and up to 1 hour of battery life (yeah right;-) with the Apple Rainbow logo (Photo). A nice touch was adjustable stand on the back, allowing to adjust the position of Powerbook (Photo). It was indeed a beautiful machine...

Now, 18 years later, what's different? Well, for around $1000 (£700) (that is quarter of the 1992 Powerbook 180 price) you get white Macbook with 2.26 GHz, 2GB of RAM, 250GB of hard drive, and Superdrive. It weights 2.1 kilos and has 13" LED screen with 1280 x 800 resolution. It also has bluetooth, airport, Ethernet, multitouch track-pad, camera, and 7 hours of battery life.

So for the quarter of the Powerbook 180 price you get a machine that is basically around 300-400 times faster, has 3200 times more storage space, and is basically a portable multimedia studio. Which makes you reflect on how 18 years changed the scope of portable computers. And I am excited about what tomorrow will bring.

Finally, I was thinking - what I could use such machine for? Uh, it wasn't easy to come up with practical application (recycle?), but it could potentially be used as a book-stand or a bookshelf holder (Photo).

Any other suggestions?[photo by Geek On Acid]

Retro [geek] Corner - Fuji Instax 200 Instant Camera

It is already this time of the year, and I am preparing for Nordcon - science-fiction assembly. This year dress up code is Steampunk - dark, Victorian atmosphere mixed with advanced industrial revolution bizarre gear. Where Turing machine is actually self-conscious and everyone wears goggles because of the smog and dust. Good times...

Anyway, I thought that I will use this opportunity to recover some of the artifacts of old technologies, that were once (quite recently) defining the reality, but are now more or less dead. I was browsing in my retro geek corner, and in the first review it is Fuji Instax 200 Instant Camera, sold by Fuji since... mid 90's.

I love this peace of gear. Extremely simple to use, and with the press of a button you produce a 10 cm x 6.3 cm photo that comes out from the top slot with lots of satisfying noises and twirls. When you turn it on people stare. People stare even when you take it out of the bag. And they are very surprised, shocked and amused at the same time.

Camera produces photos which are wider and more rich in terms of color depth comparing to well-known Polaroid One with 600 film. Fuji Instax external look misses some of the elegant aesthetics of Polaroid instant cameras, but it is still a party animal, with flash, two options of focus and three sensitivity modes. Crude. But I feel I need to exploit it in incoming Nordcon (although it is really not a Steampunk piece, nobody will care;-)


Why do I still love instant camera, in the reality where I can make thousands of photos with my iPhone or any other digital camera? It is the crudeness, grittiness and material evidence of your photographic crimes, which comes instantly, and which you can share in a very different way than digital photo on a small shitty display. You can write on it. And it is generally a social thing.

Digital photos are done without any philosophy behind them, because person is not limited by film capacity. Digital photos are freeware, they don't cost you anything so you just shot them without thinking much about it. On the other hand instant photos have a value, they not cheap, and they certainly require some thought, otherwise they will come up crap. In Fuji you need to think about distance between your focus lens and viewfinder, and adjust your position, otherwise you will shot a photo somewhere next to your target.

Fuji Instax is a kind of technology, that has certainly died from the hands of digital photography, but it is still intelligent and social type of camera. And although you can consider it as a dinosaur technology, Fuji is still making films for it, in contrast with Polaroid.

It is simply the great retro geek machine, 8 out of 10 stars.

[Fuji Instax 200 Camera]
Price: ~£25-£60 - Ebay UK for good condition camera;
~£15 in your local charity shop if you are lucky;-)

[Fujifilm Instax Wide Picture Format Film]
Price: ~£10 for twin-pack (20 shots) - 7 Day Shop UK

[photo credit: geek on acid]