2007/08 Black MacBook hard drive failures and what new mac to replace it with?

[Huggy]

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I have one of the original black MacBooks which I bought around 2007/08. I also purchased apple care. Unfortunately I have had 3 hard drive failures, the latest one only yesterday in the time I have had my MacBook. Thankfully i backup regularly. Typically my apple care has expired as well. Since this is the third time it has happened I'm not going to waste the money paying for a new hard drive. Being a student I was wondering whether to go for the MacBook pro (even though the next update is potentially a major refresh of the MacBook pro line) or the air as it uses SSD and to be honest I'm fed up with hard drives! Only problem is will the air be powerful enough for typical student multitasking with several large programs open at once.
I was also wondering as this is the third hard drive failure will apple be nice and refund me in any way or give me money off? I doubt it personally but it's always worth a shot.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[maflynn]

The MBA is extremely fast, the limiting factor is the size of the SSD. If you can live within the smaller size, I'd say go for the MBA over the MBP

 

[Capt Underpants]

Have you thought about getting an SSD for your Macbook?

I think the speeds on your machine are likely limited to 133 MB/s, but it would still be pretty fast and certainly more reliable than a hard drive. And it would be cheaper than buying a new computer. Food for thought.

 

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

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I have one of the original black MacBooks which I bought around 2007/08. I also purchased apple care. Unfortunately I have had 3 hard drive failures, the latest one only yesterday in the time I have had my MacBook. Thankfully i backup regularly. Typically my apple care has expired as well. Since this is the third time it has happened I'm not going to waste the money paying for a new hard drive. Being a student I was wondering whether to go for the MacBook pro (even though the next update is potentially a major refresh of the MacBook pro line) or the air as it uses SSD and to be honest I'm fed up with hard drives! Only problem is will the air be powerful enough for typical student multitasking with several large programs open at once.
I was also wondering as this is the third hard drive failure will apple be nice and refund me in any way or give me money off? I doubt it personally but it's always worth a shot.

You might be a little rough with your machines? In any case, why buy a new machine when you can buy a new 500 GB drive for $80? But, given that you may be a little rough, perhaps an SSD this time?

 

[Young Spade]

Get a Pro. Air won't be able to handle multiple large applications. It is limited to 4 gigs of RAM which can fill up quite quickly if you have a lot of things open. Right now I only have Canary, iTunes, iCal, Things, and the usual background applications and I'm using 3 gigs.

If you plan on keeping the machine for a while, just get a new MBP and put an SSD in it. Simple as that.

I honestly don't understand why all of these people are getting an Air as their only machine. I mean yea, if you don't "do" anything with it, that's fine, however, you can get a much better computer for a little more or a lot less, depending on the configuration.

The Pro is also very thin itself; when closed, it's as thick as my index finger.