Well, I've had a Quadra 840av for ages now. Yes, the cool old one with the 40MHz 68040. The one that has the 66MHz DSP in it for video and audio processing.

The one that was seven grand new.

Yeah. I've got one.

But anyway, I was at a friend's house and... for some reason, I had it and my Power Mac 7200 (beloved machine) out in the car. My friend's dad is a moron and just got a POS new Hell, I mean Dell.

What a turd. The plastic case is so fucking cheap that I cracked it by leaning too hard against it.

So, knowing that I use Macs, he looks at me and says "Hey, bet you can't do THIS on any of your Apples!"

He then plays a short video clip.

I look over at my friend, we go outside, bring in the 840av along with a mouse and my trusty VGA adaptor. We plug his dad's shitty Dell screen into the Quadra (I'm still apologizing to my baby) and I plug a VCR into the Quadra via the RCA video in, and the sound via an RCA to 1/8" adaptor to the mic in port of the Mac.

I fire it up, plug the cable TV into the tape player and we watch tv shows on the Quadra.

Then I look at the imbecile dad and say "No, you're wrong! But the real question is... why would I waste my time with a music video when I could watch TV on a Mac from 1993?"

Wintel boxes get so old and so decrepid so quickly that it hurts. That Quadra shames anything my dad has (older P2 Dells and Compaq boxes from 300 to 500MHz). Running OS 8.1, it's more reliable than windoze 2000.

There's just no comparison to the useful life between Macs and x86 boxen. I put Mac OS 9.1 on my 7200... a 120MHz Power Mac with 112MB of RAM is running the highest version OS available for it. 9.1 was released in 2001. The 7200 came out in 1995. Would you dream of installing Windows Me or 2000 on an x86 box that hit the streets in 1995? Never.

Oh yeah, I popped a USB/Firewire combo card as well as a Radeon Mac Edition video card in the 7200. A G3-on-a-PCI-card upgrade might be next.

Or maybe it's getting close to time to retire it?

Nah.