According to Wikipedia[1], the original clamshell colorful iBook with the molded handle came out with WiFi in 1999. As a Linux user/sysadmin, I bought my first

According to Wikipedia[1], the original clamshell colorful iBook with the molded handle came out with WiFi in 1999. As a Linux user/sysadmin, I bought my first Mac in 2002, when I quit my job to go back to college, needed a laptop, and didn't want to deal with Linux on a laptop. I reasoned I "might as well" get something with Windows on it, since being able to easily play DVDs and use Office would come in handy. I had an "aha" moment when I realized "wait a second, if all I want is Office and a DVD player, I guess I could get a Mac?" OS X had been released about a year before, which of course meant the Mac appealed to me more than Windows for the first time. It's not an exaggeration to say I knew at that time, at age 21, that Apple was about to blow up, because when I brought my new G3 iBook Mac in to work at my tech job, EVERYBODY wanted to see it and play with it, especially the greybeards. I desperately wanted to buy Apple stock then, but I held off, since it would be on borrowed money. I don't regret it, because it was the right decision, but it sure would have paid off :) Oh anyway, back to the story. My iBook came with wifi, and I paid a handsome $300 for the Airport Extreme base station (the "snow" 2nd gen model, not the graphite 1st gen). Interestingly, both the AEBS and the iBook used the same PCMCIA wifi card inside, so many years later, when the iBook's card got flaky, I just swapped in the one from the AEBS I wasn't using anymore, and it worked great. Not many people in the dorms in 2002 had WiFi-- in fact, almost nobody I can remember did. my dorm room with wireless access point faced an outdoor gathering/picnic area, so during a fire alarm one time, I took my laptop with me and was surfing the internet while everyone else figured out what to do with themselves. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBook