Picked up this old gem on eBay last week – an essentially pristine pre-unibody 17-inch Macbook Pro with an OEM battery that has, get this, 13 cycles on it. It has the glossy 1920x1200 screen and the screen holds up well even by today’s standards in terms of sharpness and clarity. It’s a November 2008 2.6ghz Core 2 Duo build with the updated version of the graphics card (8600M GT, 512mb) that likes to fail, so hopefully this one is good to go for awhile. I plan to replace the thermal paste in the near future regardless, as the previous owner told me that the computer has never been opened by anyone.
It came preinstalled (on the original hard drive!) with Mavericks and 2gb Ram (also original), but I installed a 500gb SSD and 6gb RAM from OWC and immediately installed El Capitan.
Once El Capitan was installed, I decided to try the dosdude1 Catalina patcher – your mileage may vary with this one, but it worked flawlessly for me from start to finish. We owe dosdude1 our gratitude, he really helps us keep these old Macs going.
The only real issues I had from the jump were:
I found the solution to Office 365 and Chrome crashing on Reddit: .
Following those directions, I was able to make Word, Powerpoint, Outlook, and Chrome open and function correctly. The error has something to do with keychain permissions.
The Experience
1) It is simply astonishing how well this 13-year old machine runs Catalina for day-to-day tasks. Word, Outlook, Excel, and Adobe Acrobat are all very snappy. Google Chrome is a little bit slow, but Safari is very fast and fluid. YouTube videos run at 1080p with very little issue. It’s not as smooth of an experience as my M1 Mac Mini, but it’s far closer to the experience of my 2017 i5 13” MacBook Pro than it should be, at least on paper. I'm dual-booting with Mavericks and it runs Catalina bout 90% as well as it does Mavericks.
2) It runs Zoom just fine, although the camera naturally is not that good compared to newer Macs.
3) The biggest drawback of this computer is that it runs HOT. I can see why so many of these had short lives.
4) Put simply, the keyboard is the best Mac typing experience I’ve had. The keys are soft to the touch and very satisfying to press.
5) The 1920x1200 display is like retina before retina was retina…at least on a 17-inch screen. Sharpest screen I’ve ever had on a portable Mac other than my 2017 MBP. The only drawback here is brightness – it’s not terrible, but it’s visibly dimmer than newer Mac laptop displays…especially with dark mode enabled. Nevertheless, it’s still totally usable.
6) Bootup takes 60 seconds on this SSD, which still amazes me - and when I say 60 seconds, I mean you can launch an app within 60 seconds. Not super great by modern standards, but pretty incredible knowing how old the machine is. I think SATA 1 is the culprit here.
Basically - if you want one of these old guys for nostalgia purposes (like I did) but want to actually be able to use it, I'm pleased to report that it's still very usable for basic tasks in 2021 with a SSD and the maxed-out 6gb Ram.
![IMG_1804..jpeg]( "IMG_1804..jpeg")
![IMG_1805.jpeg]( "IMG_1805.jpeg")
![IMG_1806.jpeg]( "IMG_1806.jpeg")
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![Screen Shot 2021-07-24 at 11.54.22 PM.png]( "Screen Shot 2021-07-24 at 11.54.22 PM.png")
![Screen Shot 2021-07-24 at 11.56.22 PM.png]( "Screen Shot 2021-07-24 at 11.56.22 PM.png")
It came preinstalled (on the original hard drive!) with Mavericks and 2gb Ram (also original), but I installed a 500gb SSD and 6gb RAM from OWC and immediately installed El Capitan.
Once El Capitan was installed, I decided to try the dosdude1 Catalina patcher – your mileage may vary with this one, but it worked flawlessly for me from start to finish. We owe dosdude1 our gratitude, he really helps us keep these old Macs going.
The only real issues I had from the jump were:
- The backlight on the keyboard wasn’t working
- Office 365 and Chrome were crashing on open
I found the solution to Office 365 and Chrome crashing on Reddit: .
Following those directions, I was able to make Word, Powerpoint, Outlook, and Chrome open and function correctly. The error has something to do with keychain permissions.
The Experience
1) It is simply astonishing how well this 13-year old machine runs Catalina for day-to-day tasks. Word, Outlook, Excel, and Adobe Acrobat are all very snappy. Google Chrome is a little bit slow, but Safari is very fast and fluid. YouTube videos run at 1080p with very little issue. It’s not as smooth of an experience as my M1 Mac Mini, but it’s far closer to the experience of my 2017 i5 13” MacBook Pro than it should be, at least on paper. I'm dual-booting with Mavericks and it runs Catalina bout 90% as well as it does Mavericks.
2) It runs Zoom just fine, although the camera naturally is not that good compared to newer Macs.
3) The biggest drawback of this computer is that it runs HOT. I can see why so many of these had short lives.
4) Put simply, the keyboard is the best Mac typing experience I’ve had. The keys are soft to the touch and very satisfying to press.
5) The 1920x1200 display is like retina before retina was retina…at least on a 17-inch screen. Sharpest screen I’ve ever had on a portable Mac other than my 2017 MBP. The only drawback here is brightness – it’s not terrible, but it’s visibly dimmer than newer Mac laptop displays…especially with dark mode enabled. Nevertheless, it’s still totally usable.
6) Bootup takes 60 seconds on this SSD, which still amazes me - and when I say 60 seconds, I mean you can launch an app within 60 seconds. Not super great by modern standards, but pretty incredible knowing how old the machine is. I think SATA 1 is the culprit here.
Basically - if you want one of these old guys for nostalgia purposes (like I did) but want to actually be able to use it, I'm pleased to report that it's still very usable for basic tasks in 2021 with a SSD and the maxed-out 6gb Ram.
