The PowerBook G4: a lean mean blogging machine

I have meant to post on this for a long time, so here we go: I know I am preaching to the choir when I say that the Mac, especially the PowerBook, is a fantastic blogging machine. Just take a look at the laptops facing you when you speak at a blogging conference, and you will see a sea of sleek aluminum cases with a stylized apple in the middle.

As my PowerBook is rendered obsolete by the announcement of the Intel-based MacBookPro, I would still recommend it as a blogging machine. For a few additional shekels, you can get the excellent NetNewsWire and Ecto, two great pieces of software. I can’t wait for NetNewsWire to be integrated with the NewsGatorOnline back-end so that my feeds and read marks

Obviously, you might also need to run Windows in the office, access your server-based files, run Office, etc. In that case throw in a bit of memory (adding 1GB is good), Office for Mac and ChronoSync. Microsoft Entourage does a reasonable job at replicating Outlook, but for one thing — Tasks (for some strange reason, Outlook Tasks can’t be accessed). ChronoSync is a utility that allows you to backup your PowerBook files on a server, or synchronize a server filesystem on your laptop.

Mike Torres mentioned this last week: synchronization can be a pain to manage. What I have ended up doing is to host my email on Exchange, and all my files on a central Windows server. My files are “automagically” replicated on my two laptops, and only rarely do I face a synchronization conflict.