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Fun things to do with 2012 cMBP?

T

theBostonian

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Original poster
Apr 15, 2012
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I have a 2012 Macbook Pro that I've upgraded with a 1TB SSD (Samsung Pro 850) and 16GB of RAM, I also removed the optical drive and put its original HDD in there. I'm going to be purchasing a new 15" MacBook Pro when the new ones come out this year.

My question is, what are some fun things I can do with my old power house? Should I run a server on it or use it with a cheaper 13" macbook pro for when more power is needed?
 
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theBostonian said:
I have a 2012 Macbook Pro that I've upgraded with a 1TB SSD (Samsung Pro 850) and 16GB of RAM, I also removed the optical drive and put its original HDD in there. I'm going to be purchasing a new 15" MacBook Pro when the new ones come out this year.

My question is, what are some fun things I can do with my old power house? Should I run a server on it or use it with a cheaper 13" macbook pro for when more power is needed?
Click to expand...

I had the same dilemma with a similarly upgraded configuration. In the end, the need to keep it updated, plus the possibility that sitting unused would be damaging the battery, lead me to sell it. I sold it to someone I know that needed a computer at a very reasonable price. I could have gotten more on Craigslist, but I was happy it was going to a good home.
 
Do you have a dumb TV that you want to make smart? (or a smart TV that you just despise the interface on?) I started using an old-old-old MBP with a TV quickly took to it and have done so ever since using whatever my second-most-recent MBP is for the task. With a 15-inch quad with 16 of RAM, I like how I can open several seasons of a show I want to watch, load it and let it cache, and then over several days, weeks, or even months, watch it. Like I just finished House of Cards, and I loaded all 50 some episodes at once...when I was using a 13 for this, it would slow to a crawl but the 15 was barely even affected. When I started doing this originally with a 2008 13 I figured just to try it out to see how I liked it, but a few months in I cancelled my TV subscription as I like using OS X more than I do Comcast's UI, (and more recently) Samsung's UI, or AppleTV...

I also like having it as a station I can remote into with my Chromebook or Surface Pro. On my main machine, I prefer only to remote into a VM, where as on the older machine I'm OK with remoting into the host OS.
 
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ZapNZs said:
Do you have a dumb TV that you want to make smart? (or a smart TV that you just despise the interface on?) I started using an old-old-old MBP with a TV quickly took to it and have done so ever since using whatever my second-most-recent MBP is for the task. With a 15-inch quad with 16 of RAM, I like how I can open several seasons of a show I want to watch, load it and let it cache, and then over several days, weeks, or even months, watch it. Like I just finished House of Cards, and I loaded all 50 some episodes at once...when I was using a 13 for this, it would slow to a crawl but the 15 was barely even affected. When I started doing this originally with a 2008 13 I figured just to try it out to see how I liked it, but a few months in I cancelled my TV subscription as I like using OS X more than I do Comcast's UI, (and more recently) Samsung's UI, or AppleTV...

I also like having it as a station I can remote into with my Chromebook or Surface Pro. On my main machine, I prefer only to remote into a VM, where as on the older machine I'm OK with remoting into the host OS.
Click to expand...
Those are some great ideas and sort of what I was thinking of doing too. So basically turn it into a NAS or something?

I just worry the 1TB SSD will be under utilised doing that.
 
theBostonian said:
I have a 2012 Macbook Pro that I've upgraded with a 1TB SSD (Samsung Pro 850) and 16GB of RAM, I also removed the optical drive and put its original HDD in there. I'm going to be purchasing a new 15" MacBook Pro when the new ones come out this year.

My question is, what are some fun things I can do with my old power house? Should I run a server on it or use it with a cheaper 13" macbook pro for when more power is needed?
Click to expand...

Can anyone tell me what the "c" in cMBP means
 
theBostonian said:
Those are some great ideas and sort of what I was thinking of doing too. So basically turn it into a NAS or something?

I just worry the 1TB SSD will be under utilised doing that.
Click to expand...

I completely agree that your SSD would be going to waste being utilized in such a way. I would pull the SSD out and put it in an enclosure. I would then use my "new" external SSD as a bootable external copy of Windows. If you don't use Windows, maybe you could use the drive as a clone. If none of that sounds appealing, just sell the SSD. You will have no problem getting over a couple hundred bucks for it, and turn your cMBP into a slower backup computer or a NAS/media Server as suggested earlier.
 
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theBostonian said:
I have a 2012 Macbook Pro that I've upgraded with a 1TB SSD (Samsung Pro 850) and 16GB of RAM, I also removed the optical drive and put its original HDD in there. I'm going to be purchasing a new 15" MacBook Pro when the new ones come out this year.

My question is, what are some fun things I can do with my old power house? Should I run a server on it or use it with a cheaper 13" macbook pro for when more power is needed?
Click to expand...

I have the very same MBP, 2012, and like you, upgraded to 16 gigs of ram but instead put a 1tb ssd in both the original hard drive bay and also the optical drive bay.

Call me nuts, but (as configured now) this thing still outranks many of the current laptop offerings, so it's still my mainstream go-to powerhouse.
 
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