Buying a 2008 MBP

[encircle]

You can get by with a 2008 MBP, but really I think it is a poor investment. It would be 3 almost 4 years old. You can still use it now but in a few years it might become unusable whereas buy a new MBP now would mean you could still use it for 6+ years. Assuming you still have access to your college email account you can get a 15" MBP for $1700 and you can get the $100 Mac App Store gift card as well as a free printer after $100 dollar rebate. If you are settling for a 2008 MBP you don't need the $2K model MBP. The only way I would buy the 2008 MBP was if it were less than $600 anything more and I think it is worth spending the extra money.

You definitely have a point. I'm still thinking about what I should do because I'm not sure how much life a 2008 MBP would have left.

 

[FredTheDeadHead]

The 2007 and 2008 2.4 Ghz and 2.5 Ghz MacBook Pros (Aluminum) used a NVidea 8600 graphics chip that had a horrible failure rate. It was a NVidea problem, not an Apple problem (other makers used the bad chips, also), and Apple did replace the motherboards of any Macs that had a graphics chip failure. But the replacement boards still have the same kind of NVidea chip on them. Hopefully they have fixed the issue...

I have a 2.4 Ghz, and it worked great, until one day it had 'blocks' of static on the screen. I was lucky, most people who had the failure just got a blank screen. I was also lucky that Apple dropped a new motherboard in it, under their extended warranty program. But I will sell it off soon, after I get through testing Lion on it.