How much will my MBP (L08) be worth a year from now?

[eBrooker]

One thing people often say about Macs, is that they hold their value better than PC's.

So just wondering, how much will my MBP Late 2008 (unibody) that cost £1399 be worth say 6 or 12 months from now? (Supposing it is still in excellent condition.)

A rough guess will do - I'm just curious

 

[nikhsub1]

First, a Mac is a PC. Second, never buy a computer on resale value speculation. Next, in 6 months I will give you $1 for your MBP.

 

[JG271]

nikhsub1 - Inside they are the same, but macs are highly sought after because of they're high price and nice cases/design etc, giving them a better resale value than PCs.

£1150 in a year i'd say, no idea about 6 months though. Depends if they get a price drop, that'd be a pain!
Macs have pretty good resell value, i sold my year old mac mini to a friend for £300, it was £375 new. I could probably have got £325 or so on ebay!

 

[clyde2801]

do the research

Go on craigslist and/or ebay and see how much people are asking for their used MBP's.

Keep in mind, as long as Apple doesn't do a major revamp in the next year (i.e. do anything more than a processor bump or add one or two new minor features) yours would probably be worth more since the ones on there now are obviously the earlier models.

Also, go to the Apple.com refurb page and see how much the pros have gone down in price. Unless you offer added features like extra software or extended applecare, you can expect to get less than what apple's charging for those machines.

Most mac owners are a little unrealistic when it comes to selling their higher end models. They seem to think they can get $200-300 off of what a brand new machine would sell for. But overall, I think macs do have better resell value than PC's.

 

[macrem]

IMO Macs keeping value no longer applies to MBPs. I had a Powerbook for two years and only got an offer for ~25% of the original price (gave it to a friend). I'm trying to sell my last gen MBP 2.4Ghz that costed 2400 euros barely a year ago for 1000-1100 euros. New last gen MBPs with higher specs than mine + warranty are selling for 1400 euros.

 

[clyde2801]

IMO Macs keeping value no longer applies to MBPs. I had a Powerbook for two years and only got an offer for ~25% of the original price (gave it to a friend). I'm trying to sell my last gen MBP 2.4Ghz that costed 2400 euros barely a year ago for 1000-1100 euros. New last gen MBPs with higher specs than mine + warranty are selling for 1400 euros.

That's because your MBP is officially the 'old' style model. And yeah, right after I bought mine, I saw a TWO MONTH OLD 2.5 MBP with a 512 mb graphics card on craigslist for 1400 USD, when it was 2500 on October 13th. The bad news about the nvidia graphics cards on that model may have something to do with it, too. Considering it took them five years to upgrade the design, I'm assuming the current style will stay, well, current for at least a couple of years from now.

If your model has the matte screen, I'd emphasize that heavily in your ebay or craigslist listing. "last macbook pro to have a professional grade matte screen" or something like that. Sorry about your luck, but I guess Apple-and tech companies in general-eventually punk us all, huh? (or should I say 'eh'?)