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One of the most important parts of your Mac notebook is its display. Without it, your PowerBook G4 might as well be a Mac mini. It's inevitable that your LCD screen will eventually get darker with age. It won't be as bright as it was the day you bought it, maybe it will have a defect with dark spots on areas of the screen, maybe white spots, or even dead or stuck pixels.

(If you're a fish enthusiast, an aquarist, you'd think we were talking about fish diseases here!).

The only solution here is to replace the screen. The screen is such a vital part of your notebook computer that, obviously, replacement parts and service are very expensive. If you choose to do the screen replacement yourself, you can buy just the screen for around $149 to $399 depending on if it's a system pull (say, eBay) or if it's new and/or a genuine OEM Apple part.

To make your PowerBook G4 a real MacBook Pro clone, or imitation, you can even get a glossy, yes we said glossy, LCD screen upgrade for your PowerBook, whether or not the screen is damaged or in need of repair. For just $79, you can get a glossy and richer LCD.

$79 on top of the price for the part which includes installation. TechRestore is the only company we know of that does this service. For a 15-inch model, $479.99 gets you the screen replacement service-- new part, installation and labor, but shipping is not included. The $79 upgrades the matte finish screen to glossy. (It may be a secondary process on the matte LCD).

If you're not one of those who takes care of your things like this columnist does, you're bound to have a few scratches or dents and dings on your machine. (Ding it, er, dang it!). What can you do? Well, surely not sandpaper when you have $600 that you can spend.

You can make your PowerBook G4 brand new again as if it just rolled off the factory line by asking MacService to swap out case parts for new ones. They sell them according to the area of the machine you want serviced. Top case, bottom case, LCD case, and keyboard. Prices start from $195 for a new keyboard to $320 for a new bottom case for a 15-inch model.

In, case, you were wondering, the pricing includes installation of the part for your machine. They use genuine Apple parts so no worries about substitutions-- you can't, really. MacService also does hard drive upgrades and LCD screen replacements and repair. (We'll note here that TechRestore does hard drives as well).

Speaking of hard drives, what if maxing out your hard drive capacity isn't yet enough? Or, what if you compromised on capacity for speed, or speed for capacity? If you find yourself not using your optical drive for doing much burning, watching, or listening, you can get rid of it and upgrade that slot to become a secondary internal hard drive.

MCE Technologies, makers of the famous "Pismo" PowerBook accessories of yesteryear, are still in the business--believe it or not--of making accessories for the beloved Pismo, but have also made strides to make similar add-ons to the aluminum PowerBook G4.

Their newest venture is the "OptiBay" hard drive which puts just that in the space that your optical drive currently occupies. By doing this upgrade, you turn your PowerBook G4 into a MacBook Air as it loses its disc burning capabilities (no, it doesn't make it fit into an envelope), but MCE will sell you a $49 external enclosure to put your orphaned optical drive in to.

One great thing that they don't mention is that if you're running Mac OS X Leopard, this is a fanstastic way to have an internal "external" drive for Time Machine backups!

The OptiBay gives you combined total storage capacity of 500GB--half a terabyte!--if you go for the top-of-the-line upgrade with a 250GB 5400RPM drive for $349 (this precludes you installing it in your machine yourself... add $49 to $99 to have MCE techs do it for you). Pricing and options vary depending on what upgrade path you choose.

An upgrade we were going to mention, but is apparently no longer sold (no explanation given yet by the company, to date) was DayStar Technology's "MachSpeed G4" processor upgrade that would make your PowerBook G4 a screamer. You could have upgraded up to 1.92GHz with a, yes, PowerPC chip (has to be anyway, can't be Intel) to replace your stock machine.

Prices ranged from $359 to $379 depending on the configuration with installation included in that price (shipping extra). You could have made the first-ever 12-inch PowerBook, the really old 867MHz, fly at 1.92GHz mach speed! Or, a mid-range model could have easily been made up to par with the higher-end machines. Sadly, the service has been discontinued.

(Oddly enough, you can buy 99 units, the minimum amount allowed to be added to your cart... we may investigate/inquire about this, mainly over why it was discontinued).

So, with all these options available to you, what with a $600 check coming your way from Uncle Sam, that's our econo-Mac stimulus plan for keeping your venerable aluminum PowerBook G4, your old Mac, just a little bit closer to its competition. Breathe some more life into your machine.

The only other option would be to put your old PowerBook G4 up for sale, and whatever earnings you get, depending on configuration and condition, you can net anywhere from $500 to $1000. Add that to your economic stimulus package, and you've got enough money for a brand new Mac notebook! (But don't do that-- selling the fine G4 and buying something new).

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