I bought this one a few months back for $250 in immaculate condition with 2.5GHz C2D, 4GB DDR2, glossy display and 8600M GT. I ran the dosdude patch on it so that it can run Mojave, and have pretty much used it just about every day since for web browsing, coding, photo editing and such. The battery holds a couple hours of charge, and it just runs really well. Sure sometimes it bogs down when trying to run multiple apps, but I put an SSD in it so its quick enough. I think the worst part is the 4GB RAM. I read these can take 6GB but have not upgraded it yet. For under $300, I feel that these are still a great portable machine with nice keyboard, nice size display, and the ability to run up to Catalina thanks to dosdude, and maybe big sur? Have not tried it yet. Anyone else still use one of these all the time?
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Anyone still dallying Early 2008 Pre-unibody 17" MBP?
- Thread starter M3Stang
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I love the design on this machine so much, i have one with the dreaded gpu issue i plan to reflow and put back into use. Mine has the battery still working (tested in a friend machine). I suggest you do some thermal modding (repaste and thermal pads to dissipate the heat through the keyboard and the bottom case) to prevent it from certain failure!
I am also looking for some undervolt tools on core2duo as they are avaiable on windows and were also on macos until el capitan with coolbook app, but no such thing for Sierra and later ...
Yeah this thing is awesome. Sometimes the back light will not work when waking from sleep or powering on but it usually resolves itself with another reboot. I thought about re-applying paste, but I don't use it for super intensive things to where I am worried about heat. I re-applied TP on my PowerMac G5 quad and it never worked again, so don't want to risk breaking this one. It is my only nice and modern-ish Apple laptop so hoping it holds me over till the Apple Silicon makes it to a larger display/improves compatibility with running windows for C# VS Studio development. The Mac one is just sub par for me. Can't make Windows Forms apps and so on.
I got another broken one for free w/o HD , battery , ram and charger - this time it's a 2.5ghz with 512mb vram. Going in the oven now, i am super thrilled and hopeful at least one will be back to life. Now i really need to find a 17 inch one - mine are both 15inch sadly 
I got the spotlights issue and then the screen eventually died around 2018 but I was able to use it with an external monitor. Then I left it on a table for a month or two unattended and it had bulging battery and the machine was toast. If the battery is almost gone, you might just remove it and leave it plugged in all the time.
I did upgrade it to 6 GB and put in a supercard SSD. It gave me ten years of service. And it was a good workout carrying it in my backpack.
I did upgrade it to 6 GB and put in a supercard SSD. It gave me ten years of service. And it was a good workout carrying it in my backpack.