PowerBook G3

PDQ

The PowerBook G3 PDQ — Pretty Damn Quick — was Apple's September 1998 revision of the WallStreet chassis, and the name was not ironic. While the entry-level WallStreet shipped with a passive-matrix 12.1-inch screen, the PDQ started with a 14.1-inch TFT active-matrix display across all configurations, giving it a noticeably sharper and brighter picture at a time when most laptops still offered passive screens as standard. Its G3 processor ran the same backside L2 cache architecture at 116 MHz that made the WallStreet a benchmark sensation, and the dual hot-swappable expansion bays could hold a second battery, a Zip drive, or an optical drive — a genuine engineering flexibility no other laptop offered at the price. The PDQ bridged the gap between the WallStreet and the Lombard, sold for about eight months, and is often overlooked precisely because it sat between two more famous siblings. That makes it relatively uncommon in the wild despite being one of the most capable PowerBooks of its era.