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A MacBook Air winning streak!

Within a week, I picked up two 11" MBA's in a row - both with the buy-it-now option. The first was a Late 2010 2GB 1.4 Ghz C2D for £120 GBP that the seller had put up for sale because they'd tried, failed and given up attempting to reinstall the operating system but suspected that someone who possesses the right skills would be able to succeed. I read the listing and thought: yep - that sounds like me. :D

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The price was reduced from £120 to £100 after I contacted the seller and informed them that I'd discovered that the battery was completely exhausted and only held a 1% charge and El Capitan - which I was using initially, warned that it needed to be replaced. When I removed the bottom plate, I realised that was an understatement - it was on the verge of potentially exploding or damaging the computer's other components.

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As you can see, half of the cells had become swollen - and the logic board needed a good clean. 😂

Here's the replacement battery - also from eBay: not a "genuine" unit but I'm sure that it will suffice. ;)

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Check it out now, cleaned up and with the new battery installed. The fan looks so much better! :)

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Seeing as it's a C2D machine, having the option of booting Snow Leopard and the availability of Rosetta seemed logical but installing SL presented a challenge because the MBA requires 10.6.4 but the earliest release that you can download with Internet Recovery is Lion and the copies of Snow Leopard that I had at hand were either 10.6 or 10.6.3. It's surprising that no-one has uploaded the specific MBA USB installer to the Garden...

Anyhow, this post enabled me to obtain a copy of 10.6.7 which I then modified using this guide to replace the installer package with one from the 10.6.3 retail disc and from there I created a USB installer. For some reason that I couldn't work out, El Capitan on my MBP wouldn't allow me to carry out the modifications but switching to Snow Leopard solved that.

The installer rebooted and it was time for the moment of truth.

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Success! :D

Let me know if there's any interest in uploading a copy of my USB installer to the Garden so it can help others who have a late 2010 MBA and find themselves in this situation. The new battery solved a number of power management issues that had previously made me fear that there was a fault with the logic board or that the El Capitan installation was corrupted because prior to replacing the battery - even connected to the mains, the MBA experienced a delay in powering up, would fail to resume from sleep and was erratic with rebooting correctly. It now works perfectly, as was confirmed with a little shakedown test.

There had to be at least one game involved... :)

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Now for some TV recordings...

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I'm aiming to set up a triple-boot with Snow Leopard, El Capitan (which appeared to be surprisingly snappy considering the RAM constraints) and Linux Mint. Please feel free to weigh in with suggestions or recommendations.

Time for MBA #2. :)

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This 2011 i5 1.6 Ghz 2GB MBA popped up in the spares/repairs section with a buy-it-now option of £40 GBP.

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As you can see, the battery and the SSD had been removed but a PSU and a Thunderbolt cable were included. I contacted the seller and they informed me that it turns on and displays a blue screen, which made me suspect that it could be restored to working status if the SSD was replaced. At £40 GBP I couldn't see any reason to deliberate over buying it because even if I was unsuccessful, I could keep it as a donor machine or strip down the parts and resell them for far more than I paid for it so I took the plunge and bought it.

A purportedly genuine battery from eBay and the gift of an SSD from a very kind member of this site who shall remain anonymous but to whom I'm indebted, put me in the position to see if the machine could be resurrected.

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Success: it works! :D

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Even factoring in the cost of the replacement battery (which was hardly expensive), this is an absolute steal and has to rank as one of my best Apple related eBay bargains of all time. There's a few screws missing but I've ordered new sets and that's an inconsequential matter! The C2D I'll keep for myself and being a good, unselfish son, the i5 will be a surprise birthday present for my mother in order to help increase her IT literacy and enable her to use the Internet and send e-mails without needing to rely on others - which is an area where she's keen to improve. I've got stacks and stacks of other machines so it's only fair to give her the superior MBA out of the two.

On reflection, I think I've done pretty well here because I paid a total for both machines that's lower than what a single MBA would cost either through bidding or buy-it-now. :)
 
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I'm aiming to set up a triple-boot with Snow Leopard, El Capitan (which appeared to be surprisingly snappy considering the RAM constraints) and Linux Mint. Please feel free to weigh in with suggestions or recommendations.
I have the exact same MBA and just set up High Sierra on it. Snappier than I thought it would be. And thanks for bringing up the battery - even though mine still holds a good charge after more than ten years and 430 cycles, I should probably check it... 😅
 
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I have that C2D MBA. Apart from upgrading the internal SSD from its original modest 64GB it is pretty much stock. I haven't used it in a while because with the modern internet it does beachball a fair bit switching between pages and links. The original 2GB of RAM doesn't help but the ULV CPU is a slug and the battery life is nothing to shout about.

I love the form factor, though and if Apple hadn't dropped it in favour of the 13", I would have bought a newer one.

I'll see if I can dig out the Install medium and throw it on MG. It has been a decade since it came out and I doubt that either Apple or the third party devs who have apps on it care now.
 
the ULV CPU is a slug
I've been thinking - someone with the right tools and expertise could replace the CPU - what about the 2.13 GHz LV from the 13", undervolted if necessary...?

I'll see if I can dig out the Install medium and throw it on MG.
I have it too - but my upload is only 100 KB/s so it would take ages.

I love the form factor, though and if Apple hadn't dropped it in favour of the 13", I would have bought a newer one.
What about the last (2015) 11"? Seems solid apart from the low-res TN display; can run Big Sur and external 4K monitors at 60 Hz.
 
I've been thinking - someone with the right tools and expertise could replace the CPU - what about the 2.13 GHz LV from the 13", undervolted if necessary...?


I have it too - but my upload is only 100 KB/s so it would take ages.


What about the last (2015) 11"? Seems solid apart from the low-res TN display; can run Big Sur and external 4K monitors at 60 Hz.
I considered it but I really wanted the 8GB version for longevity and I couldn't find any except the base 4GB model. I plumped for the 2015 MBP instead.
 
I have the exact same MBA and just set up High Sierra on it. Snappier than I thought it would be.

Oh? That's interesting, would you recommend it?

Just a thought, it might be worth sharing your experiences with HS here. :)

And thanks for bringing up the battery - even though mine still holds a good charge after more than ten years and 430 cycles, I should probably check it... 😅

I've got quite a number of spent Apple laptop batteries to dispose of at the local recycling centre. I ought to check my 2012 MBP's battery because it hasn't worked effectively for a few years now and it might need to join the pile.

I have that C2D MBA. Apart from upgrading the internal SSD from its original modest 64GB it is pretty much stock. I haven't used it in a while because with the modern internet it does beachball a fair bit switching between pages and links.

My C2D MBA is coping very well with the modern Internet thanks to the SpiderWeb browser. I have ten tabs open: many of which are quite heavy and I haven't experienced any beachball spins whilst switching tabs etc. :)

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On a side note, I've experienced the beachball affliction on far more powerful machines, particularly with Firefox - which regularly causes the fans on my MacBook Pro to run at full speed. Sometimes it slows my computer down to a crawl and I have to quit the program and then reopen it in order to return to normal speed. Browsers have become increasingly bloated and inefficient.
 
Why not? Anything can theoretically get caught in customs - I've had this happen with a laptop.

It happened to me with a DVD not too long ago. :D

Not going through customs, someone is bringing it over to North America for me.

That's what I usually do when I need to send items to my father in the Caribbean. They carry it in their hand luggage as a personal possession and avoid customs issues. :)
 
Not going through customs, someone is bringing it over to North America for me. Even if it does take a while, I'm willing to wait. This is the model of laptop I used as a kid, it'll be amazing to get it again. :)
Kewl.. and you still are a kid :) Yeah, I just got a 15 inch DLSD PowerBook G4.. However, its going to be tough since I use my Titanium more as an everyday machine. 1.67 ghz is nice though, but its a PITA to take the aluminum model apart and put my M2 SATA in there.
 
That's what I usually do when I need to send items to my father in the Caribbean. They carry it in their hand luggage as a personal possession and avoid customs issues. :)
Yeah, it works better that way for sure :)

I was planning on paying international shipping and then they offered to carry it with them, which I'm all for given the savings on shipping. :D
Kewl.. and you still are a kid :)
Sorta, technically an adult now but definitely still have a lot of life to experience. xD
 
Well, that's clearly an early prototype of the upcoming 8K Blu-ray. :D

(I wonder how much data could be stored on a 12" disc using today's tech.)
after some quick math I would guess around 800GB using basic Blu-ray technique (around 8x the size), but I'm sure there's a tiny turbo-vector-rocket-something disk in some laboratory giving you the 30TB you need for backing up the internuts
 
I considered it but I really wanted the 8GB version for longevity and I couldn't find any except the base 4GB model. I plumped for the 2015 MBP instead.
Dual graphics ? I too have a 2015 MBP with 16Gb and dual Intel Iris+ Ati Radeon R9 chip (maybe R7 ?).. either way, my PB G4 titanium seems to be getting more love currently.
 
Last week I managed to buy not one but two hard to find portable 2.5" firewire enclosures.
They were marked up as spares/repairs because the seller couldn't test them, but I got one for £5 and the other for £10.
Both came boxed and with all the associated bits included.

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The yellow and red drive had a 6GB HDD in it and was a pain to open up, but I managed to get a 128GB mSATA SSD to work, and now it's my backup drive for the Pismo.

The other case was also difficult to get inside but I finally managed to put an 80GB spinner in, which is now a backup for my iMac G4.

Cheers :)

Hugh
 
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