I am so excited to welcome a new computer to my growing fleet of Macintoshes. And this is a bad ass machine. Hence, I named it "Bad Ass! 6400".

Bad Ass! 6400 is a Performa 6400, originally introduced on August 7, 1996. So this puppy ain't even five years old. Inside it's running a PowerPC 603e at 200 MHz. This of course, blows the doors of my former computers, a Performa 475 named Jee-zus! 475, my brother's old PowerMac Performa 6115CD named Allah! 6115 and my portable PowerBook DUO 230 Kee-rist! 230. In fact, right now Jee-zus! 475 and Allah! 6115 are still hard at work ... holding up my monitor to a perfect eye-level.

So how did I come about this Performa 12990 Fleet? Well, I've had old Jee-zus! 475 since the summer of 1994. Sadly, it wasn't even near the top of the line back then, and it hasn't gotten any better with age. But don't get me wrong, it got me through four years of college and three of the real world. And for that I am forever grateful.

I inherited Allah! 6115 from Daniel, well, actually my parents used it for a bit, too. Then they got their fancy iMac with its see through case and it's "flavors" and all that hub-bub. Well, I was happy with Allah! 6115, although I still used Jee-zus! 475 for all of my e-mail needs.

As for Kee-rist! 230 (what?!?! What's the big deal? You named your computer, right? And honestly, isn't it more fun to give it a weird name? I just like saying them over and over. In fact, that's why I wrote this entire article, just to say the names over and over!!) So, anyway, back to Kee-rist! 230 - I got that online back in the fall of 1998. I wanted a laptop, and the Duo 230 is actually the lightest Mac ever (something like uder 3 pounds!). It's a trustworthy little guy, and everytime I go back East I take him with me, never to use him. But just in case I want to ...

Since all of my machines combined only had about 124 MHz going for them, I wanted to upgrade. Mostly this had to do with me only being able to run Netscape Navigator 3.1, which wasn't even Y2K compliant. Yeah, everytime I went to a website since December 31, 1999 I've had an error message - something is wrong with this website - supposedly they say it's the year 2000.

Duh!

I found information on upgrade cards for Allah! 6115 (the Performa 6115CD - that's why I put the numbers at the end ...). But the damned card was going to cost $300. I knew I could do better.

So this brings me around back to Bad Ass! 6400. I went on eBay and found a good deal on the Performa 6400, only $102.50. Sure, it only had a 500 MB hard drive and 16 meg of RAM - but that's easy to take care of. I went over to Frys in Burbank and bought a new internal 18.6 gig Seagate IDE drive on Friday, and had no trouble popping the old drive out and putting the new one in. As for the memory, well, that's ordered from www.coastmemory.com - I'll tell you how it works out! So far I've only spent around $250!

And the Performa 6400 is a pretty cool machine. It's one of the first macs to have the IDE drive instead of a SCSI drive - so they're cheaper (IDE is what Wintel machines use). Plus, the internal speaker converts to a subwoofer when external speakers are attached! So that means when I play Keep Fishin' by Weezer on mp3, it sounds rad. Oh, yeah ... I can play mp3 files. Howbout that?!? The only drawback is my 33.4 modem makes for slow downloads.

The only other disappointment is the video RAM. Right now I can only get 256 colors. Dude, on the Performa 475 - Jee-zus! 475 - I could get thousands of colors!! I'm currently looking into an ATI Xclaim Rage card of some sort. That'll jack up the colors, and might even give me video in/out. Dude.

So that's where my fleet of Macintoshes stands today. They're all talented, good machines with some fun names.

- Josh Edwards