Shadoe Huard, who spends around 3 hours commuting each day, needed a cheap, portable Mac for writing during those commutes. He picked up a 12-inch PowerBook for $200, and his review of this 7-year-old piece of Macintosh history is fantastic:
Using the 12-inch PowerBook for almost a month now, the most striking aspect of its physicality is how reminiscent it is of using a 13-inch MacBook Pro. Like the Pro, it’s an ideal combination of portability and functionality that, while not enough for some, will be particularly pleasing to a lot of people. Aesthetically, the PowerBook is a machine that holds its own today. Perhaps no longer the pinnacle of design and engineering it once was, there is still a lot to appreciate and enjoy. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the 12 inch form factor is still an excellent compromise between physical dimensions and screen resolution that hasn’t yet been recaptured by a Mac notebook. This machine is a pleasure to carry around and type on, setting the stage for a potentially great writing tool.