C.S. Lewis once observed: "If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man . . . Going back is the quickest way on."

I'm a PowerBook guy. "So, what else is new?" you may be saying to yourself. That's sort of stating the obvious for someone who has been writing a column about Mac portables for three years.

However, regular readers will probably be aware that last May I bought a G4 Cube. Hearing this news, Remy Davison over at Insanely Great Mac commented good-naturedly: "1,000 curses on ye, traitor to the Glorious PowerBook Faith!"

However, I never really left the PowerBook fold. I have continued to use my faithful WallStreet 233 MHz PowerBook as my main production machine through the summer and fall, and my affection for Mac portables is undiminished. This story really begins back in January, when Steve Jobs unveiled "one more thing" on stage at MacWorld Expo San Francisco.

I was blown away by the aesthetics of the TiBook, and for a few days I really, really, REALLY wanted one as my next system upgrade. Then, after some sober second and third thought, the idea began to dawn that what might be a better choice for my purposes would be to grab one of the newly discontinued Pismo 500s instead. The price advantage of a leftover Pismo vs a new TiBook was obvious, but there were other issues as well.

For one thing, the G3 Pismo could be presumed to run cooler than a G4 TiBook, while not suffering much, if any, performance deficit for the sort of stuff I do with computers. This was particularly so with regard to the fact that the only TiBook I could remotely afford would be a 400 MHz model, while the 500 MHz Pismo seemed within reach. I figured that the 500 MHz Pismo should be able to dust a 400 MHz 7410 G4 quite comfortably running non-Altivec applications.

Then there was the analog microphone port issue. I'm a heavy microphone user for dictation software, and all of my microphones and headsets are analog -- not USB. While the mic-level units can be used with USB thanks to Griffin's cool iMic adapter, iMic doesn't support PlainTalk, and I like my PlainTalk mics.

I was also not enchanted by reports of various teething problems with the early TiBooks -- CD/DVD disk eject troubles and case contact, dodgy battery connections, etc..

Consequently, when MacWarehouse Canada advertised leftover Pismo 500s, including a 64 MB RAM upgrade, for Can$2995, (about $1975 U.S.) in February, I ordered one. MacWarehouse took my order, but as it turned out, that day they had two machines left, and got 12 orders. I was one of the 10 who got the bum's rush. Back to square one.

I was still getting good service from the WallStreet, so I decided to bide my time and put upgrading on the back burner for a while. Then in May, Dan Knight at Low End Mac came into possession of the new G4 Cube that was surplus to his needs, and he asked if I would be interested.

I had admired the Cube from the time of its introduction in July, 2000. It was small, and when paired with a LCD monitor it seemed like it could be considered almost a portable Mac, and powerful one at that. Since I use my PowerBook mainly as a desktop machine anyway, in theory at least, a Cube seemed to make some logical sense has a reasonably-priced, powerful, compact computer.

Dan's price for the Cube with a whopping (by my standards anyway), 576 MB of RAM seemed fair, so I said OK.

The Cube was indeed fast, quiet, and came with a great set of Apple Pro satellite speakers. All that RAM made it seem like I would be able turn off Virtual Memory forever. The Apple Pro Keyboard and optical mouse were spectacular looking, and the 20 GB hard drive provided lots of room. Very much appreciated was the Cube's ability to copy dictation in iListen in near real time.

The heat-sensitive power button on top of the Cube was very cool looking, especially the way it pulsed when the Cube was sleeping, although it is too easy to trip unintentionally when handling the machine, for instance when tipping it to get access to the ports on the underside, which I found more annoying and cumbersome than I had expected to, and would put on my short list for the Cube's worst feature. If the Cube had survived in the marketplace, perhaps someone would have come out with a Cube dock.

However, what nonplused me most about the Cube was that it was too big, or more precisely, the Cube CPU module itself is quite compact, albeit surprisingly heavy, but when combined with all the peripheral stuff it requires, it is a lot bigger package than a PowerBook.

My work area is not very large, and while the 8" x 8" x 9 1/2" Cube with its keyboard and mouse fit nicely enough, there were the speakers with their amplifier, and the oversized power brick, and since the speakers are USB and there is no dedicated sound-out port, a USB hub was a necessity so I could hook up the speakers along with the keyboard and mouse, my Cirque Easy Cat trackpad, and the Griffin iMic adapter, and the hub had its own power brick, and the spaghetti of wires and cables to connect everything, and then there was the monitor.

Now, if I had had an LCD monitor, I would doubtless have enjoyed the Cube a lot more than I did, but I wasn't going to stretch the budget by more than Can$1,000 (including tax) for one of those until I was sure the Cube and I could be happy shipmates, so the old NEC VGA 15 in. monitor I use with my UMAX S.-900 got commandeered into service, and it is a big, heavy lump. Consequently, I had to extend my computer desk in two directions just to accommodate all this stuff, and while I got it all to fit, barely, I found things uncomfortably crowded, and I was sitting closer to the CRT monitor than I liked.

There was also the issue of the Cube not having a battery, which meant that during power failures, which are not unheard of out here in the woods, it would be not be usable, and there was of course increased likelihood of data loss. To make a long story short, I soon reverted to the WallStreet and restored the elbow-room in my workplace.

I hasten to add, however, that I don't want to give the impression I didn't like the Cube. I did. It is a very cool machine. However, it is also very much a desktop computer, and as I said at the beginning of this essay, I'm a PowerBook guy.

I guess it took buying the Cube to discover for myself just how much of a PowerBook guy I really am. And as. C. S. Lewis noted, when you are down the wrong road...

I put the Cube up for sale about three weeks after it arrived. A university professor friend of mine expressed keen interest in it, and made a provisional commitment to buy it. Unfortunately, another three weeks passed before it was determined that the university procurement folks would not fund the purchase of a "discontinued model." My friend ended up with a QuickSilver. The Cube sat mostly idle for the rest of the summer, used mainly as a file backup device.

With the onset of Fall, I decided to try advertising the Cube for sale on some of the Mac classified Websites. The first response I got was from a guy in Virginia who asked if I would entertain the notion of trading the Cube for a used Pismo.

It was a pretty nice Pismo on paper, with 500 MHz, 256 MB of RAM, and a 20 GB hard drive, as well as VST Zip and SuperDisk expansion bay modules. I decided that this could be an attractive deal if the logistics could be arranged.

After some discussion, it was decided that a leap of faith would be required by one of us. Since the Pismo's owner wasn't using it at the time, and I have a degree of public persona, it was agreed that he would ship the Pismo to me; I would transfer my files; and then ship the Cube to him. It took a week for the PowerBook to travel from Virginia to Nova Scotia, but it arrived safely, and lived up to the owners' description. Not in mark on it, it seems to work perfectly, and there are no dead pixels. According to its serial number, this machine was built in the 39th week of 2000, so it is just a little over year old, probably something less than that in actual use.

At this writing, the Cube has been shipped to Virginia. I'm happy with the Pismo so far, and I hope its former owner will be happy with the Cube. I get the Mac I originally wanted, and am fully recommissioned in the PowerBook army, while he gets what is virtually a brand new Cube that is still under warranty.

I'm taking my time switching to the Pismo as my production machine. My schedule is very tight, so getting it configured the way I like has to be squeezed into spare moments. I have reformatted the hard drive (it also boots nicely from my little QPS M2 FireWire hard drive) in my customary four partitions. My archive files have been transferred (via Ethernet), and I've installed OS X 10.0.4, OS 9.1, and OS 9.2.1 on respective partitions. OS X installed without any problems (I have still never been able to get it to install on the WallStreet).

Once I begin using it as my day in, day out workhorse, you will no doubt be hearing more about my Pismo adventures.

Charles W. Moore