How much is an original Macbook Air worth?

[bigeasy_uk]

I picked up this 2008 macbook air today for the fantastic sum of £90 ($150).

It's in great condition, a couple of very slight scratches on the bottom and a very small dink on the trackpad button, other than that it's like new.

It was advertised as non-working as it was stuck at the grey apple logo screen (I suspected an update loop, I was right).

It's up and running now and I'm in the process os updating it, I'm upgrading it to lion now and I'm going to try out the Mountain lion hack to see if it's stable.

How much do you think I could sell it for? It's not boxed but comes with power cable.

 

[GoCubsGo]

$300 maybe.

 

[brand]

$300 maybe.

As much as an under performer as the first generation was I would say $300 is on the high side.

 

[mojolicious]

Set an eBay watch list and follow the prices for a couple of weeks. There aren't many there at the moment, but I'm thinking that you could get close to £300 for a Jan 2008 model.

Can't see the attraction myself: that's the same price as a 2010 MacBook, and is very anaemic in comparison.

 

[sixrom]

My brother just sold his. It was in excellent condition, cosmetically perfect. It took a month but he finally sold it for $210. In it's original box with everything it came with.

 

[noodle654]

I picked up this 2008 macbook air today for the fantastic sum of £90 ($150).

It's in great condition, a couple of very slight scratches on the bottom and a very small dink on the trackpad button, other than that it's like new.

It was advertised as non-working as it was stuck at the grey apple logo screen (I suspected an update loop, I was right).

It's up and running now and I'm in the process os updating it, I'm upgrading it to lion now and I'm going to try out the Mountain lion hack to see if it's stable.

How much do you think I could sell it for? It's not boxed but comes with power cable.

To be honest, I would not pay over $250 for it. Those first generations for notorious with problems, mainly CPU overheating. Don't even bother with Lion unless it has 4GB RAM...I had ML on my old 2009 MBA and it was terrible with only 2GB of RAM.

 

[mojolicious]

$300 maybe.

I would say $300 is on the high side.

It took a month but he finally sold it for $210.

To be honest, I would not pay over $250 for it.

The OP's in the UK.

We pay more here in the first place – your $899 11" MBA is £749, which is currently $1255 – and our second-hand market is 'stronger'. I don't know if this is due to different supply/demand levels, or simply an unspoken cartel between sellers. Either way, a half-decent Jan 08 MBA sells for $450+ over here.

On the plus side, of course, if you're selling to finance a new purchase then your outgoing Mac is going to fund a comparatively greater % of your incoming Mac.

 

[Clix Pix]

My first-gen MBA (purchased February 2008) is still running smoothly.....on Lion. The other day a friend was over; she's a Windows user who is right now having her Dell whatchumacallit laptop cleaned out after a massive virus attack. She eyed my Macs with interest, especially when I mentioned that I was in the process of getting ready to ship off my 2007 MBP 17" to PowerON and that I was thinking about doing the same with my first-gen MBA. She has an iPhone and an iPad and because of her frustration with Windows I think is on the brink of jumping into the full Apple ecosystem. She asked about the MBA in particular, and I told her honestly that if she wants to buy a new Mac, this is NOT the one with which to start. I told her she'd be much better off with a refurb or a new MBA or MBP, NOT the first-generation MBA. I explained that even though, sure, it is still surprisingly speedy with the 64 GB SSD and the 2 GB RAM, that the ports are very limited and also in terms of software that the machine cannot go beyond Lion (without some serious hacking). Not to mention that the 64 GB RAM SSD doesn't provide a lot of opportunity for storing anything on the drive..... Her iPad has just as much storage!

Actually, as it happens another friend called me today to report some major problems in her life, and among them one is that her white MacBook has apparently died, and if that is indeed the case I will probably be giving my old MBA to her so that she has something to use until she can afford to buy a new or refurb MBA or MBP in the future. Her use of computers is very limited -- primarily she looks at a few things on the internet and checks her email and that's about it -- so the older MBA would do just fine for her for at least a while in the interim.

Anyway, resale value at this point on these is very, very low......as is their value as useful devices in today's fast-moving tech world.

 

[bigeasy_uk]

Thanks for all your input guys, I put it on gumtree at £250 and someone offered me £220 ($368), which I took.

 

[mojolicious]

Sounds like a fair price for a quick sale.

*checks eBay calculator*

A £250 sale via eBay would cost you a minimum of £26.33, apparently.

 

[J&JPolangin]

...you made out on the deal, good job...