Did I make a good investment?

[Exiled91]

I know many of you are power users and use your Macs forever but I have a simple, albeit, random question. I purchased a late 2008 MacBook (aluminum, unibody, 2.0ghz Core 2 Duo, 4gb 1066mhz RAM) and was curious about something. I graduate high school in 2010 and College in 2014. Will this MacBook last me through college (more specs wise and less reliability wise because I trust the reliability of MacBooks). All I really do is surf the web, create word documents, watch/rip movies... pretty much the basics. I don't encode video or anything crazy like edit large files in PhotoShop. It pretty much boils down to, will I get 6 good years out of it before it is totally outdated?

Thanks guys!

 

[zbasarab]

I know many of you are power users and use your Macs forever but I have a simple, albeit, random question. I purchased a late 2008 MacBook (aluminum, unibody, 2.0ghz Core 2 Duo, 4gb 1066mhz RAM) and was curious about something. I graduate high school in 2010 and College in 2014. Will this MacBook last me through college (more specs wise and less reliability wise because I trust the reliability of MacBooks). All I really do is surf the web, create word documents, watch/rip movies... pretty much the basics. I don't encode video or anything crazy like edit large files in PhotoShop. It pretty much boils down to, will I get 6 good years out of it before it is totally outdated?

Thanks guys!

i have the same computer. it is already outdated. in theory if you are really good to it it might last 5 years if you needed it to. realistically you will want to update it in 3 years.

 

[1rottenapple]

Man personally I think you will be fine. My mom's macbook pro has 1.5gb ram, 160 hd, and 2.16 core 2 duo bought from 2006 and its fine now. She needs it for web surfing, itunes, word, quickbooks, excel, email,and ripping dvds via mactheripper and handbreak. I foresee that computer lasting another 5 years unless its dropped or one of the components fail.

You can always upgrade the computer to ssd. I personally upgrade my macs all the time but its cause I have an addiction.

 

[Exiled91]

Yeah, I see what you mean. I don't see it not lasting through college and I tend to upgrade it when I can. As a matter of fact, I just threw a 500GB Western Digital drive into it. The Gateway laptop that this MacBook replaced died after 5 good years from the motherboard frying and I never ran into problems when it came to speed or reliability up until its demise so, if the Gateway can last me 5, I don't see why my MacBook couldn't pull out 1 more than it!

And, zbasarab, the current MacBook Pros are exactly the same but with .26ghz more processing power and that battery so I don't really think they are outdated just yet

 

[iPhysicist]

It will do just fine

There is no need in modern Laptops for your purposes. Doing common Office jobs as you mentioned the MBP barley needs the half of its power. With 4GB Ram you are doing fine. Maybe you should replace the battery in time but if you handle your MBP with care it will bring you joy until the day YOU think it is time to break up with it

 

[Techhie]

There is no need in modern Laptops for your purposes. Doing common Office jobs as you mentioned the MBP barley needs the half of its power. With 4GB Ram you are doing fine. Maybe you should replace the battery in time but if you handle your MBP with care it will bring you joy until the day YOU think it is time to break up with it

The processing power may be fine right now, but I think in 5 years time he will find that modern apps don't fare to well on his rustic chipset. The only things that irk me about that model are the lack of illuminated keyboard and horrible LCD panel.

 

[J&JPolangin]

I just sold a 7 yr old Toshiba laptop that was a P4 2.4 Ghz "northwood" CPU and it ran well/was actually faster than when I bought it (I replaced the stock 4200 RPM drive with a 5400 HDD w/ double the cache) = I got my $$ out of it for the last 7 yrs and it will be fine for the uses of the purchaser... I type this on an almost 10 yr old Dell in my sig.... so it will defo run in 5 yrs, but you will probably have it for more basic tasks than your main machine by then...