The PowerBook 2400/180 was made for the Mac user on the go.
Weighing in at 4.4 Lbs. this machine was both light and stylish
and helped Apple recover from the taint of the 5300 fumble.
That isn't to say the this machine didn't have it's faults.
The light weight and compact size of this machine came with
a cost. Both the screen and keyboard were smaller than other
portable offerings of the time and internal storage was limited
to the hard drive. Fortunately an external floppy was provided
with the 2400 which connected via its own special port on
the back of the machine. More problematic for many was the
small keyboard which was roughly 87% the size of a standard
keyboard. Compare this with the Duo keyboard which was 95%
the size of the standard keyboard and you can see why many
touch typists were grumbling. To be fair, there were many
folks who claimed that the keyboard worked fine for them and
it was just a matter of giving your fingers time to adjust
to the smaller layout. Apple also incorporated "scissor
technology" into the 2400's keyboard to make it more
responsive and hopefully compensate for ham fisted typists
like myself.
The best thing about this machine was its compact size and
weight. Compared with the 7.2 pound 3400 the 4.4 pound 2400
was a lean machine. Since both machines share the same 603e
processor and 256k L2 cache, performance on the two was roughly
equivalent. While bulkier than its predecessor the Duo, it
boasted many features that the Duo was lacking, namely a full
array of ports on the back (serial, ADB, SCSI, infrared) freeing
users from having to use a dock.
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Below you will find the MacBench 4.0 results for most of
the processor upgrades available for this machine. These results
are what the individual manufactures publish for their cards.
In other words the speed trials were run by the manufacturer.
For an independent evaluation of these cards check the Processor
Upgrade Page to see if we have results available. The
bar graphs below express results as a percentage of improvement
over the base machine, which receives a score of 100%. Further
down the page you will find a table with the actual MacBench
score
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