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Anyone else happily using half-decade-old hardware?

My 2009 mac is getting slow, but my gaming PC (which runs most games on medium or high) is actually 1/2 a decade old, too! I hadn't realized that when I started typing this, but it's a custom PC that I started in 2009, and have upgraded here and there over the years... but its motherboard was purchased summer of '09.
 
Yup, I've posted about it before. I have a 15' late 2008 mbp. I took the speck cover off few weeks ago and the machine is still absolutely beautiful :D

I replaced the battery (finally) as it didn't hold much of a charge. Next steps are to upgrade to ssd and clean the fans....it's been getting really hot lately (86˚ C ).
 
Anyone else happily using half-decade-old hardware?

I recently upgraded to the newest MBP, cause video editing with my late 2008 15" MBP was a pain. I didn't want to learn Final Cut Pro 7 cause it is becoming obsolete and Final Cut Pro X ran REALLY bad on my old mac.

I guess Apple gave me an excuse to spend money by making their new software run bad on older hardware ;)


Edit: also USB 2 is too slow for 2014 (for me)
 
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ooans said:
I recently upgraded to the newest MBP, cause video editing with my late 2008 15" MBP was a pain. I didn't want to learn Final Cut Pro 7 cause it is becoming obsolete and Final Cut Pro X ran REALLY bad on my old mac.

I guess Apple gave me an excuse to spend money by making their new software run bad on older hardware ;)


Edit: also USB 2 is too slow for 2014 (for me)
Click to expand...

I'm in the same boat as you, except I'm holding out for Broadwell. Working with horrible Proxy files in the meanwhile to ease the pain a little :D
 
anth said:
I'm writing this from my late 2008 Macbook Pro (the first of the unibodies, the one with the battery/hard disk access door). It has a 2.53 GHz Core2Duo (Penryn), and originally came with 4 GB ram.

I've since upgraded to 8 GB ram, and a 480 GB ssd. The thing is... it's still fantastic. It runs Mavericks smoothly, and really hasn't left me wanting for more performance.
Click to expand...

Interesting, i also have a 2009 MBP and running 10.6.8 and very happy with it, no performance detioration other than battery replacement and a few leads (not the best design as kinking kills it where it joins the machine) other than that i hope to be using it for another few years.

What difference did an SSD make ? I am also considering upgrading the OSX but am concerned i will have to shell out upgrades for Parralels and CS4 if i go all the way to Mavericks. I also heard rumours its not perfect but heresay and all that..
 
brasiliangringo said:
Interesting, i also have a 2009 MBP and running 10.6.8 and very happy with it, no performance detioration other than battery replacement and a few leads (not the best design as kinking kills it where it joins the machine) other than that i hope to be using it for another few years.

What difference did an SSD make ? I am also considering upgrading the OSX but am concerned i will have to shell out upgrades for Parralels and CS4 if i go all the way to Mavericks. I also heard rumours its not perfect but heresay and all that..
Click to expand...

I too ran 10.6.8 for ages! I had a lot of things that ran stably under SL, but it was finally time.

As for the impact of the SSD, the machine is overall noticeably more responsive. It wakes from sleep basically instantly, boot times are much shorter, program load faster, and I really don't think I've seen a spinning beach ball since...

I believe your machine has SATA III (whereas mine was only SATA II), so you can really take full advantage of adding an SSD. SATA II is a bottleneck for my drive.

Mavericks is pretty great thus far, with what I've been running anyhow (Adobe CS6, R Studio, MS Office, and a Python IDE). Oh, and using a VNC client pretty frequently. I actually did a clean install of Mavericks to the SSD (from a bootable USB drive that I made), added a recovery partition, and then manually moved over files and reinstalled software.

Cheers,

Anthony
 
simonsi said:
Mac-mini is 2007 so 7yrs old, MBP is 2011 so <only> 3 but showing no signs of aging yet...also still using 2x 2011 iMacs at work. Again they are showing no signs of slowing down and haven't even been SSD'd yet...
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Of course not, Intel hasn't had any real boost in performance in almost half a decade.

2011 Macs aged much better previous generations.
 
Up until about a year ago, my two primary computers were a 2005 PowerMac G5 and a 2008 MacBook Pro (the 15" non-unibody model). I ended up selling both at different times, but effectively replacing them with a 13" MacBook Pro (non-Retina). I've seen plenty of 2009/2010 models upgraded with more RAM and an SSD hold their own even today, so I don't see anything wrong with using a 4-5 year old Mac.

That being said, I'm looking forward to trying to squeeze as much out of my current one as possible!
 
I don't have any Mac that old right now, as I usually keep my computers for about 3 years and then give them to my family so they can have an upgrade.

That being said, my mid 2009 13" MBP is still being used to this day. Before I gave it to my parents, I had upgraded the RAM from 4GB to 8GB and the HDD to a 256GB SSD. Other than the fairly weak GPU, it is still a very good computer with those upgrades.
 
I use an old Mac Pro 2,1 from 2007 8 core. I convert my iTunes movies on that it's actually faster than my iMac 27 i7 late 2009

I also have a MBP early 2008 with 2gb ram it runs Yosemite pretty good even with 2gb of ram
 
Anyone else happily using half-decade-old hardware?

I got my first Mac for my birthday, the Mini in 2010! I upgraded it to 8 GB ram last year. It runs great today, and it's great that the past couple of OS releases are compatible on it (although I was upset to see Handoff won't work). But with college I'll probably want to look in to an MBP...
 
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Mid 2009 13" MBP. 1TB HD, 8 GB RAM. I use it for work and personal. I will likely upgrade this year because I have I7 envy. But other than that, I'm perfectly content.
 
My work machine is an early 2009 Mac mini. It recently hit five years old but with additional RAM and an SSD it runs flawlessly.
 
Nice stories I wish I could keep mid/late 2007 MBP but I can't keep two apple laptops and not fair to left out. And I heard Yosemite will run on 2007 MBP, I am pissed off. :apple:
 
I'm still running my 2008 Unibody MBP. It feels so slow these days. Even youtube videos stutter. Why is it that I can't even watch videos on the damn thing?

I swear it was faster when it was new. I've had plenty of macbook pros. I've had the recent quad core ones too but I got tired of pampering them. So I picked this one up for 600 bucks and now I don't mind if it gets banged around in my bag.

I am considering getting an SSD. I dont think I need more than 4GB of RAM. Would RAM really be my bottleneck? I almost always have 1GB or more free. I only use the webbrowser and maybe PPT or word. Nothing else. It shouldn't be slow just browsing the web! It's still a Core 2 Duo and I'm still only on Snow Leopard. I don't think computers should SLOWDOWN when we're still doing the same thing we were 5 years ago!
 
My 07 MacBook died in 2012. Using a 15" 2012 rMBP with 256GB SSD and 16GB RAM. The SSD is always full. Need to get a new one with a 1TB SSD. Hopefully the next refresh brings the prices of 1TB SSDs down.

I still have an early 09 Mini and a late 09 Mini. The fan and/or hard drive is going in the early 09 Mini. Might get both the fan and hard drive replaced.

I also have a 2011 Mac Mini Server

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abuzar1 said:
I
I am considering getting an SSD. I dont think I need more than 4GB of RAM. Would RAM really be my bottleneck? I almost always have 1GB or more free. I only use the webbrowser and maybe PPT or word. Nothing else. It shouldn't be slow just browsing the web! It's still a Core 2 Duo and I'm still only on Snow Leopard. I don't think computers should SLOWDOWN when we're still doing the same thing we were 5 years ago!
Click to expand...
Get an SSD. 4GB RAM is more than enough if you are happy with Snow Leopard.
 
Cloudsurfer said:
I'm in the same boat as you, except I'm holding out for Broadwell. Working with horrible Proxy files in the meanwhile to ease the pain a little :D
Click to expand...

One thing from Broadwell MBP I will be jealous of is the more powerful GTX 850M graphics card.

But then again, if you wait for Skylake you'll get a new thunderbolt connector with Thunderbolt 3 (and also DDR4, etc.)

There's always a "reason" to wait for the next big thing, but I needed to edit videos today and not in 1st quater of 2015 :)
 
Definitely! I'm waiting to upgrade the SSD on my late 2008 Macbook Pro. These machines have way more durability than say an iPhone or iPad which get obsolete very soon.

I just cannot justify $2000 for a device that still works perfectly for me

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abuzar1 said:
I'm still running my 2008 Unibody MBP. It feels so slow these days. Even youtube videos stutter. Why is it that I can't even watch videos on the damn thing?

I swear it was faster when it was new. I've had plenty of macbook pros. I've had the recent quad core ones too but I got tired of pampering them. So I picked this one up for 600 bucks and now I don't mind if it gets banged around in my bag.

I am considering getting an SSD. I dont think I need more than 4GB of RAM. Would RAM really be my bottleneck? I almost always have 1GB or more free. I only use the webbrowser and maybe PPT or word. Nothing else. It shouldn't be slow just browsing the web! It's still a Core 2 Duo and I'm still only on Snow Leopard. I don't think computers should SLOWDOWN when we're still doing the same thing we were 5 years ago!
Click to expand...

SSD is your bottleneck. 4gb is okayish most of the times
 
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