The Pismo has the Rage Mobility 128 Graphics chip, and although it only sports 8MB RAM, it seems significantly faster than the older version of the rage in the lombard. Also Apple Supports Playing DVDs in OSX on the pismo, and you have to reboot into 9 on a lombard, however what is cool about this is when you hook your Lombard into the TV to watch a DVD in OS9, it won't display the image, to prevent copying. However in OSX apple no longer does that, so you can use a Pismo as a regular DVD player on a TV in OSX.
Port wise, the Pismo sports 2 Firewire Ports and Two USB ports. The lombard on the other hand, has 2 USB and one SCSI, however on some early lombard, the USB has some issues, like it takes a few minutes for it to wake up after its been sleeping, making it very annoying for anyone using an external mouse or keyboard. I am sure there is a work-around, but I never bothered to find it as it only took my lombard 30 seconds for the USB to come on. If scsi is a must on the Pismo, adaptec makes PCMCIA Cardbus scsi adapters you can add. If you want Firewire on a lombard, firewire cards are available, but then you cannot add a wireless card. In the Pismo, there is an Airport slot located right under the keyboard, which allows you to add wireless while keeping the PCMCIA slot open.
Memory and Processors are also different. A few (well more than a few now) Lombards are ending up with dead cache memory on the processors, specifically on the 400MHz ones. Currently no one seems to be able to explain this, and there is no fix. Also some lombards have funky memory slots where it will crash if you put more than 64MB in one slot. I think apple did repair many of these, but its still something to keep in mind when looking at a stock lombard. The higher memory expansion is great on the Pismo, and it really doesn't effect the battery life much. I get about 2:50 on full brightness and 3:30 dimmed, but both my batteries are 2 years old.
The only beef I have with the pismo is I am always re-soldering the sound jack, it breaks off very easy, so be careful with it, and My backlight keeps getting darker as the weeks go by. Also make sure you don't get a pismo with the funky "LG" DVD drive.
Otherwise its a great laptop, and you can get a decent one for $600-$800 now.
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