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Macintosh PowerBooks are a interesting breed of computer. They are easily distinguished by the small colorful Apple logo on the case. Battery lives range from 1 hour and 15 minutes, to 3 hours. The PowerBook line is divided into 3 sections. The PowerBook 100 series. These were the first PowerBooks, a venture put forth by Apple in a valiant attempt to save face in the notebook market after the Macintosh Portable, a weighty, slow, and innefficient computer which no one will admit to have liked. The 100 series is currently occupied by the 100, 140, 145a, 145b, 150, 160, 165, 165c, 170, 180, 180c. They are the oldest of the line, and some would say the best. They have a small trackball on the palmwrest. Something that Apple created and now several other computer makers have copied. The original PowerBook, and one that has achieved almost a cult following is the 100. It's a nice little 5.5 lb puppy, with a detachable floppy drive, up to 8 meg ram, up to 500 meg harddrive (from third party vendors), stereo out sound port, scsi port, modem slot, printer port, ADB port for keyboards and mice, and the power plug. The battery is removable and replacable. The 100 can also be mounted on a seperate Mac as a hard disk. The screen is supertwist LCD, black and white. Its processor is a 16MHz 68000, no speed demon, but it does the job. The other PowerBooks have all those ports and a few others, most have sound in ports, and some have modem ports. All of the new models, and the 160, 165, 165c, 180, 180c have ports for exteral monitors. The computers with a "c" after them are color, although the color on the low end machines is hardly worth it. The 150 is a student model with hardly any ports and a 33MHz processor. The Duo Line. The Macintosh Duo was Apples forte into the sub-notebook market. The Duos are small, powerful, and expensive. At least new ones are. The Duo line has one long port on the back, a phone jack, and a power jack. All the ports come on adapters to the main port. The ultimate gadget freaks computer. The Duos currently released are: 210, 230, 250, 270, 270c, 280, and 280c. The higher end color Duos have really nice screens, although they are a bit on the small side. The trackballs on the Duos are more like trackmarbles too. The "BlackBirds." This line was introduced just recently and includes the 520, 520c, 540, and 540c. The new PowerBooks don't use trackballs, but have small touch sensitive pads that you sweep your finger over. I have been told they are quite wonderful. The screen on the 520c is a Dual Scan color screen, decent but not breathtaking. The 540c, on the other hand is a real beauty. It's an active matrix color screen, a real show off. This is the PowerBook people would buy if they could afford it. The BlackBirds also have a PCMIA adapter available so you can use PCMIA cards in your Mac. You can get RAM cards, modems, and network adapters on PCMIA cards. The BlackBirds are also upgradeable to PowerMac. They also have PDS slots, similar to expansion cards. There is some word of a new line of PowerBooks, the M2 line. These will be PowerMacs, with too much power for their own good. If you have any more questions, call 1-800-sos-appl, Apples support line. I'm sure they would be more than happy to help.