About the 2012 regular 13" MacBook Pro

[RegularGuy09]

My younger brother is going to college and recently bought the 2012 regular 13" MacBook Pro.He was short on budget and this was the cheapest Mac he could afford.He didnt ask me for recomendation,or I would have told him to buy the 13" Air but whatever.

My question is now that he has bought this,do you think its a good buy?His usual tasks are surfing the net,netflix,writing papers etc,nothing too hardcore.Upgrades are out of the question for the next 2-3 years.So how do you guys think this laptop will fare for the next 2-3 years?

Specs :

-Core i5 2.5Ghz processor
-4GB Ram
-500GB HDD
-HD 4000 graphics
-7hr Battery life.

 

[tubeexperience]

If he bought it used for $500, then perhaps.

If he bought it new for $1100, Hell no!

 

[RegularGuy09]

If he bought it used for $500, then perhaps.

If he bought it new for $1100, Hell no!

He bought it for around $850 new.What do you think about the performance he'll get?

 

[andreyush]

Umm...Make those 850$ worth and buy an SSD. Then your macbook will live a good and wonderful life . Trust me is worth! That hdd is awful and doesn't show the full performance of your brother's macbook .

 

[Samuelsan2001]

He bought it for around $850 new.What do you think about the performance he'll get?

For that use case it's fine, as others have said though a switch to SSD will make it the machine all it can be.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"He bought it for around $850 new.What do you think about the performance he'll get?"

I think he'll do just fine, with one proviso:
REPLACE the platter-based HDD with an SSD. 480gb size should do fine.

I'd suggest a Crucial MX300 or a Sandisk Plus.
I believe the Crucial SSD's are giving you a little more "storage space for the money" these days, up around 270gb.

The job of swapping drives is about as easy as it gets.
Go to ifixit.com to see the procedure and be sure to use the RIGHT TOOLS FOR THE JOB.

Buy a 2.5" enclosure and use the original HDD for an external backup drive.

The 2012 non-retina MBPro will be a strong performer for years to come with an SSD inside.

 

[jerryk]

SSD and 8 or 16 GB memory upgrade. That should be enough for several years of good service. You can get the parts for $100-200 depending upon size. Ifixit has instruction on how to the upgrade. Takes about 30-45 minutes.

 

[GoldfishRT]

Running my '2012' with an 850 Pro and 16GB of RAM and other than the very outdated screen, it's fantastic and very, very fast. I'm a college student as well for what it's worth. I do a lot of programming, writing, music production, and media consumption and it never slows down.