Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Are the old black MacBooks still a solid buy today in terms of reliability?

T

The Final Cut

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 5, 2009
378
0
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Thinking of buying one as a temporary computer but do you think it will burn up and die randomly? Do they have any known problems?
 
Get one. They're great. I'm typing on one right now. I've dropped mine at least 8 times, no problems. The best Mac laptops are the plastic ones, they last forever.
 
For the money they are a good purchase and hold resale well. If I had some extra cash lying around I'd snag one myself
 
I have been using my 13" white Macbook since 2007. The battery STILL gives a good 3.5 hours of use, yes the palm rest is cracked a little, recently the optical drive stopped burning CD's but still reads, the screen, hinges and top case were replaced last year after I dropped it from about a metre to a hard tiled floor but all in all this is the most reliable, hardworking laptop computer I have every owned and when it does eventually die, or is no longer supported by Apple software/OSX i would not hesitate to replace it with another.
Grab one while you can!
 
I have one and I love mine. But if I were only buying one temporarily, I'd get a unibody MacBook (2009 or newer). It won't be black, but it would be faster and have a separate video card. I'm glad the black ones hold their value well, but you know it's just due to the colour.
 
I just bought a mint condition black one a few weeks back and sold it for a nice $180 profit last week. People still buy those things, and i'm just amazed how decent that 5 year old macbook performed, and how future proof it was. Who buys a 5 year old Windows laptop?
 
That black macbook has been a great machine.

I postponed giving away mine to a family member because of the infernal WiFi issues I've had with the 13" MacBook Pro I got in March. Some people say that Lion resolves their WiFi issues encountered while using Snow Leopard. Time will tell for me.

In the meantime I have to say that the black macbook has been trouble-free and very sturdy. And I liked being able to replace the battery myself by just ordering one. I live in the sticks so the nonreplaceable battery models eventually prove a pain in the neck for me, I have to ship the machine in or drive 180 miles to get it taken care of.
 
I bought a used one about two months ago and use it more than my 15" MBP. I haven't regretted it at all! I believe it was the last MB to have Firewire.

I had bought a new one back in April of 2008 and sold it after a few months and always regretted that.
 
Intell said:
I love my Blackbook. Its getting a bit cranky, but I think its due to me pushing it too hard. Poor thing, I abuse it.



Not quite, the mid 2009 was the last model.
Click to expand...

Cool. Thanks for the correction. I haven't really kept on them since the new one I bought back then in 2008.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back