Remembering Owning The PowerBook Duo 210 โ€” 1993-1994

My First Portal Mac.

Remembering Owning The PowerBook Duo 210 โ€” 1993-1994

I got the PowerBook Duo 210 because I could get it for a discount as an employee of an Apple dealer. I thought it was cool to get a portable Mac. At the time, it was considered a light and small portable. Its slightly rounded edges, and relative thinness, made it look light, highly portable and approachable. The PowerBook Duo 210 had a greyscale screen, and its performance was relatively modest compared to the Centris 610, but it was portable. The lack of any port was alleviated by introducing the expansive Macintosh Duo Dock, which I didnโ€™t have. Coupled with the Duo Dock and an external monitor, it was a cool and novel setup. The Duo Dock made this machine enjoyable to experiment with. We had one at the store so I could put my PowerBook in it and work with a bigger display. It was really cool. This Mac sported a trackball and a low-profile keyboard. I was not too fond of the trackball as the pointing device. The keyboard wasnโ€™t that great either. But, it was small and highly portable.

Then and now.

The PowerBook Duo 210 didnโ€™t stick too long with me. I eventually got rid of it, and it wasnโ€™t replaced with another Mac. So for about a year, I was a โ€œMac-less person.โ€ The reason for that was simple: I could test almost any Mac I wanted by working at an Apple dealer. I even remember bringing a Power Macintosh 8100 home to test software on it (man, this machine was heavy).

Artifacts

Because of its short stay in my life, I donโ€™t have any more artifacts to go with this article.