I have a 1.25Ghz Al-PowerBook that's still running fine. I just got a new MacBook but the old girl is running just fine and is enough for secondary duties.

They seem to keep going forever. Apple makes great stuff.

I have a Ti book (DVI 800MHz), still running good on an original battery. It does have a few problems though: broken hinge (glued a couple times and now broken again), trackpad doesn't work 95% of the time. CD burner is a bit flaky. It was sat on years ago before I got it. So these days it doesn't go on the road, but it still serves well as a desk-bound computer in my home office. With an external DVD burner, it can does great duplicating DVDs. And likewise it does great capturing video, helping take load off my main MacPro.

Macs just don't seem to ever quit.

My sister still uses a 400MHz TiBook. I had my 500MHz TiBook trucking until last year. I had to replace the hinges on that one, and I gave it to my Dad when I bought a newer Powerbook. It was enough to convince my Dad to buy a Macbook Pro. Can you imagine a 6 year old Dell convincing someone to switch to Dell?

I did replace the battery a couple years ago (and the current battery is definitely showing its age...), but my TiBook still gets used "almost" daily. Mostly by my 7yo son when I've got he C2D iMac occupied, but I occasionally take it to the kitchen or living room (or even the garage!) if I'm just wandering aimlessly on the net.

Oh, and I sometimes bring up a reference image or two on the TiBook's screen when working on illustrations on the iMac. Kinda like dual monitor, but not really!

My 500MHz PowerBook TI that I ordered during the keynote when Steve was announcing them has traveled with me all over Asia, survived a fire in a hotel room in Taipei, survived a bus running over my suitcase (the black nylon type) in Japan, and got soaked during a freak rain storm in Guangdong... All without a single failure. All that time I had my original two batteries and swapped them on a regular basis. Now it is at a company I do a lot of work for living out its days as the receptionist's computer... running 10.4 no less! I willed it to them when I got my MacBook Pro 2GHz (also ordered during the announcement keynote... I'm using it right now).

During that time a business partner of mine who traveled to all those locations with me has gone through 5 Sony laptops and 4 Dell laptops. He finally gave up on PCs when Steve announced the new MacBook Pros last month.

A 450MHz 8-year old Cube, with a 15" Studio Display, beefed-up 160G HD, running 10.4 shows no signs of aging. What's really remarkable about this Mac is that Tiger is quite snappy and works fine. The Mac boots faster than my office Core 2 Duo WinXP Lenovo desktop. Most standard applications start up reasonably fast and I'm actually toying with the idea of slapping Leopard (with some minor hacking) onto it, just to see how it will behave.

Did I mention it is an 8 years old Mac?

My 1GHz Ti PowerBook is 6 years old this month. It was the first model, I think, with a DVD-burning Superdrive. I used it professionally to run Avid Xpress Pro and Apple final Cut Pro for several years. It's been on almost continuously for those 6 years, BTW.

I'm on my third battery, my second screen (replaced weeks before the extended warranty ran out) and my 4th internal hard drive. (I just installed a 250 GB two weeks ago.) It even had a glass of NZ sauvignon blanc dumped on the keyboard while running, and it's still going strong.

If only the RAM could be upgraded past 1 gig it would still be a nice computer, but Leopard on 1 gig RAM is pretty iffy.

I've been ready to upgrade for two years, but the old aluminum MacBook Pros were too ugly. The new MacBook Pros are nice, but they don't have matte screens and, well, the economy sucks. I'll hold out a few more months.

I just got the new Macbook to replace the original (400mhz) tiBook. I only used the tibook for travel, in the past 3 years, but the tibook really gave up the ghost. It was a great investment. A great computer. But the new macbook. Oh my. R.

I remember when this model came out, because I was in the market for a laptop at the time, myself. I compared the TiBook with the Pismo, and in the end, decided that the Pismo was the better computer--more expandable, more flexible--and simply the better deal at the time (plus, it ran OS 9 faster). Years later, I upgraded to OSX and a 550mhz G4 processor. It's still going strong, although I've been _really_ hard on it. I've gone through two audio/power cards, two batteries, and three DVD drives. That's not because these things were particularly weak, but because they were heavily used. It is still my main computer for photography, audio processing and video work. I only just a few months ago got an MSI Wind netbook for web and email, and simple word processing, etc. And I've never regretted not getting the TiBook. In fact, this is the first I've heard of someone still using one of these! Lots of Pismos still out there that I know of, but not many TiBooks.

-Jon

when i was given a PB G4-1.5GHz recently, my trusty TiBook began a new life as a network fax server running PageSender. it sits in the rack next to our Leopard Server and faithfully sends and receives faxes for us. i think it's pretty cool that we can keep getting good use from it and not have to dispose of it just because its getting old.

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vasic wrote:
A 450MHz 8-year old Cube, with a 15" Studio Display, beefed-up 160G HD, running 10.4 shows no signs of aging. What's really remarkable about this Mac is that Tiger is quite snappy and works fine. The Mac boots faster than my office Core 2 Duo WinXP Lenovo desktop. Most standard applications start up reasonably fast and I'm actually toying with the idea of slapping Leopard (with some minor hacking) onto it, just to see how it will behave.

Did I mention it is an 8 years old Mac?

I wanted to get something out of my 2001 Titanium Powerbook G4 667 MHz Gigabit/VGA before it depreciated any further.

I sold it on Ebay, in September 2008. It always worked fine and the buyer did not report back, after receiving it in it's original Apple shipping box. I published a lot of photos of the machine's chipped paint so that the buyer would not feel jipped.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290260566397

I replaced it with a used 15" Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz machine back in August of 2007. I waited a whole year before I put my Tibook up for auction.

It was reliable for me for the entire seven years I owned it. I never liked the Apple Powerbooks until Apple released the first Titanium notebook designs.

I bet there's even more life than you thought i your Tiger Mac:

http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/technology/xgrid.html

perhaps a better article at:
http://www.mactech.com:16080/articles/mactech/Vol.22/22.01/BuildYourOwnSupercomputer/index.html

My TiBook was a birthday present to myself in Nov. of '01. Added a DVD-RW, max RAM, 80 G HD, & a Belkin 802.11g PCMCIA card over the years (& went from Puma to Tiger), despite a few dings & scratches it's still my main road machine & still draws looks & comments