What will become the next "Beige"?

Question

Hi all,
After reading all the latest about the new dual-core Macs, versus the older dual-processor Macs, I got to wondering .... The dual-cores are described as being not as fast as the dual-processors -- but with great expansion capabilities. Sound familiar?
Now, I know we all love our Beiges, and one of the things we love most about them is their almost infinite capacity to be expanded, tweaked, revved up, etc. But the day will come, eventually, as much as we hate to accept it, when we'll need to move on.
So, now that we're thoroughly infected with the "let's-get-inside-and-see-what-we-can-do" bug, what's our next, best 10-year Mac?

Answer 1

Great discussions but I'm way back on the curve (figurately and literally) so I don't know that this will catch up to you all.
I 'upgraded' to a G3 300 two years ago from a clone powermac and just got onboard with an dual iBook 500 this month when the Powerbook 3400 died. My Mac life began with 1MB Plus in 1989, then a Performa which went to my mother about 5 years ago and she used until recently when her work forced a PC on her. So you can see I'm pretty much committed to living behind the times.
Nice to know you all are so devoted to your beige babies. I had no idea they were such a treasure to some although personally I'm not that into messing with the hardware that much. For me it's mainly about committing resources (time and money) appropriate to the tasks (which are minimal w/p, web-surfing and e-mail). I know my wife thinks way too much time goes into it when I make the next little leap forward as recently.
Compatibility in web environments is primary 'push' to upgrade most simply to reduce frustration as there isn't a whole lot we couldn't do until the kids wanted MP3 players (thus USB here we come). I'd welcome any tips on how to function, network and surf simply in the G3 world.
I'm happy to plug along on older 'clunkers' as long as they meet our minimal needs. The ibook is my way to join the USB and OS 10 world (running 10.3 on the iBook) and contemplating the pitfalls and benefits on trying it out on the Beige desktop. I want to network the two and share the cable modem. I'll go to another topic for that as I've seen some discussion on it already.
Anyway I ramble (if I had cows I'd go milk). Why we do this does raise lots of interesting paths to go down leading all the way back to those Luddites with a nod to who knows who else along the way. I'm all for getting the most out of our tech/plastic/silicon resources before we dump them in the dustbin. We could also talk about 'master-slave' relations, who's the 'server' and who's the 'client', 'virtual' and real, etc. The Gnut of it is sharing and allocating resources equitably in a non-hierarchical network (bet you can guess where our daughter hangs out virtually).
I best shutdown before the system crashes from too many open metaphors!!