Talk:PowerBook 500 series

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First paragraph plagiarized from Low End Mac?[edit]

The first paragraph appears to be largely plagiarized from the Low End Mac web pages documenting the 500 series. See PowerBook 520c. In addition, all over the internet, there is mention that the PowerBook 500 series was the first computer to use PCMCIA. This is simply not true. The PowerBook 500 series came out on May 16, 1994. According to a COMPUTE! article from May 1993 [1], there were computers already out that used PCMCIA slots. I'm going to re-edit the page to fix both.

Ehurtley 21:19, 22 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]


There should be some mention of the 550C not being released in the US, in this article.

T-wood1130

I will be expanding on this from my old web page.[edit]

Decades ago (that long?!?!) I wrote a long page that was Co-hosted by O'Gradys Power Page, which has since combined with another and dropped my original work.

I had my work on Compuserve since first written, and is still there. No I will transfer the bulk of it to the Wiki.

I have 2 of the 500 series, serviced about a dozen of them over time, did numerous upgrades to my 500 as well, and played with the PC card cage to do other tricks. --Flightsoffancy (talk) 17:07, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

History discussion[edit]

My telling of the history may not be precise, so corrections to the time line are welcome, but please post it here sources and events. Also, additions or notes are wanted, fill in the gaps. TY --Flightsoffancy (talk) 22:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Other accelerators[edit]

There is a company called Output Enablers that sold an accelerator for the 040 processors in form of a new foam heatsink, special holder and a new oscilator that incresed frequency from 33MHz to 36MHz (18Mhz oscilator) or 38Mhz (19Mhz oscilator). Should this be in the article??

Info still available at Output Enablers —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cgecastro (talkcontribs) 11:43, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disputed first touchpad[edit]

This line of laptops was not the first with a touchpad or trackpad. It was if anything, I imagine, the first by Apple.

  • Byte confirms what Wikipedia already says on the Gavilan SC article, i.e. that it has a touchpad ("[...] touch panel that is used as pointing device").
  • InfoWorld states, as is obvious, that the Psion MC400 and MC200 have a touchpad in 1989 ("[...] two other laptops, the MC-200 and MC-400. Both use Psion's proprietary multitasking operating system with its graphics interface, and both come with a built-in touch pad, the functional equivalent of a mouse.")
  • An advertising brochure for the Psion MC line says "Psion has developed an even more intuitive pointer system that the mouse -- the 'touch pad'."
  • The book Milestones in Computer Science and Information Technology by Edwin D. Reilly, quote: "[...] who started the Gavilan Computer Corporation and in 1984 promoted his machine as the first "laptop" computer. This early Intel 8008-based laptop had [...] an innovative touchpad"
  • A modern-day Business Insider article, which says "From 1983 onward, several new input techniques were developed and included in laptops, including the touchpad (Gavilan SC, 1983)"
  • Another current online magazine to refute the ZDNet claim, Trusted Reviews, plainly stating "The first touchpad arrived in 1984 along with the Gavilan SC"

I think InfoWorld and Byte should be enough to show that ZDNet is patently wrong, but for good measure, I've dug for some more sources. Please remember just because something is a "source" doesn't automatically make it correct, even on Wikipedia. I will remove the claim shortly unless someone comes up with some kind of trump card proving that my sources are all wrong, I guess.

LjL (talk) 14:36, 16 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

P.S.: OMPIRE, I have no idea what you meant by "Revert removal of cited content", as I did not remove anything this time, after your revert, but simply added a "discuss" tag that points to to this thread. Please try not to misrepresent my edits.

I also like how you use "rv unrelated" for 'revert' when you aren't reverting at all but just removing the entire sentence that was originally there and that I changed to finally make accurate. But whatever, it's accurate now. LjL (talk) 13:36, 20 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]