Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

How much would you offer for this Macbook Pro?

S

shaynp

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hi Folks,

Just signed up today and looking for some advice on a purchase of a secondhand Macbook Pro in silver with a matte screen.
The spec if as follows:-
Processor: Intel Core Duo 1.83GHz
Hard Drive: 320 GB 7200 RPM
Memory: 2 GB of RAM (DDR2 667MHz)
Screen: 15.4"
OS: Macos X Leopard
Apple Care expired.

He says...........
I bought it 3 years ago and got it serviced by apple care from the begining.
The screen was replaced 6 months ago by Apple. I upgraded the hard drive to 320GB and the memory to 2GB (667MHz DDR2).
You would not notice it is a 3 years old computer, it is as fast as a new macbook. I took good care of it.

MS Office is installed, Apple Aperture 2.0 is installed (professional photo edition), IWork 08, ILife 07, etc.

I am selling it because I always keep my laptops for three years (this is my third mac).
Click to expand...

Please can someone advise roughly hom much this would be worth in pounds sterling. I want to make a fair offer but don't know how much as I'm new to the Mac world.

Thanks
 
Ok, let me start off, it's not as fast as a new MacBook 🙂
Does it come with the OS and software install CDs? If not, the software is pretty much worthless. It also depends on it's condition, but if it's in good condition I'd want it to be <£600
 
I think it comes with cd's, will have to check and he tells me its in good condition.
Would there be a big difference in speed between this and new macbook?
 
All depends on what you're going to be doing with it, but anything CPU intensive, I'd have to say yes (although it depends on which MacBook you're comparing it against). The 1.83 and 2Ghz Core Duo processors are still ok, but a fair way behind the newer Core 2 machines
 
shaynp said:
I think it comes with cd's, will have to check and he tells me its in good condition.
Would there be a big difference in speed between this and new macbook?
Click to expand...
It will be considerably slower than a new Macbook. I'd say the price should be around the £500 mark considering it is 3 years old and has no warranty. 🙂
 
-Ryan- said:
It will be considerably slower than a new Macbook. I'd say the price should be around the £500 mark considering it is 3 years old and has no warranty. 🙂
Click to expand...

It shouldn't be *too much* slower, maybe about 80% of the speed of the MacBook? I have a 2 and a bit year old 2.16 C2D MBP (it's also on eBay, for £650 at the moment. BUY IT! 😀). I have just replaced it with a 2Ghz C2D MB, and the macbook is not much faster at all. Despite the lower clock speed, it is quicker, as the system bus is faster. For 3d games, you don't really notice the difference except at resolutions above 1024x768.

As Ryan points out though, you get a years warranty with the new MacBook, and a 3 year old laptop is now out of warranty.

Oh yeah, and to answer your original question, I'd say £600 absolute tops for a Core Duo system - the Core 2 Duo ones should be able to run in 64-bit mode in Snow Leopard, whereas this one won't be able to.
 
Thanks for all the replies, I'm leaning to waiting for the possible updates in June and then perhaps just picking up a standard macbook from the refub store for around £750-£800.
Only thing that might persuade me is the matte screen on the secondhand one as I will be using for photo editing on PShop.
 
Well, Mac2Sell.net is a great website for things like this.

I threw in the spec and got this.

I'd try and get £550 for it though. Even though the guy is installing software on it, without those discs, they're pretty worthless. Not to mention against the user agreements.

As for saying it's as fast as a Macbook, as others had said, no it isn't. I think the new ones even Apple say are around 3x as fast as the first generation Macbook Pros.

Good luck anyway!
 
I think that it's crazy to buy a 3 year old computer with outdated technology, no os or software disks and no warranty for anywhere near £500.
You would be better off buying a new Dell laptop for less or spending more for a current spec mac laptop.
 
Luis Ortega said:
I think that it's crazy to buy a 3 year old computer with outdated technology, no os or software disks and no warranty for anywhere near £500.
You would be better off buying a new Dell laptop for less or spending more for a current spec mac laptop.
Click to expand...

Would you also say it's better to buy a brand new Ford Mondeo rather than a three year old BMW M5?

They are completely different cars. A Dell and the MacBook Pro are completely different computers. If you want the higher quality computer for the same money as a cheapy Dell (and the £500 dell's are crap, we use them at work), you have to get one that is a few years old.
 
Willis said:
As for saying it's as fast as a Macbook, as others had said, no it isn't. I think the new ones even Apple say are around 3x as fast as the first generation Macbook Pros.
Click to expand...

Is it really? You are following Apple's "comparisons" of the new systems. Bear in mind with both of these systems that for many applications, the performance bottleneck is the graphics card.

Check out these benchmarks:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-X1600.2163.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9400M-G.11949.0.html

The original MacBook Pro is nearer the lower end of the scale for X1600 cards as it is not clocked very highly.

Notice how the old MBP graphics card is BETTER than the MacBook Geforce card in some tests. The MacBook is in no way three times faster, and offers a marginal performance boost at best.

If the MBP has a 320 Gb HDD (compared to the 160 Gb in the base unibody one), the HDD is much faster than the MacBooks one. a 5400rpm HDD is faster than a 7200rpm 200 Gb HDD, so it will easily blow a 5400rpm 160 Gb one away, (neither get close to saturating the SATA bandwidth). Again, in terms of raw performance, the MacBook will be faster.

You will probably see a difference with the CPU/Memory tests. The MacBook WILL win. But, the CPU difference shouldn't be more than 20%, and the memory will certainly not be 3x faster.

If you are wondering why I know so much about this, it's because I've just swapped my second gen MacBook Pro for a Unibody MacBook. I spent a long time looking at benchmarks first to make sure that the MB would be better than the MBP, and cater for my needs. When I bought my MBP, it was touted as being 10% faster than the first gen, this is why I don't think that the CPU and memory would be too much faster than the ones in the original MBP.
 
bobnugget said:
Is it really? You are following Apple's "comparisons" of the new systems. Bear in mind with both of these systems that for many applications, the performance bottleneck is the graphics card.

Check out these benchmarks:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-X1600.2163.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9400M-G.11949.0.html

The original MacBook Pro is nearer the lower end of the scale for X1600 cards as it is not clocked very highly.

Notice how the old MBP graphics card is BETTER than the MacBook Geforce card in some tests. The MacBook is in no way three times faster, and offers a marginal performance boost at best.

If the MBP has a 320 Gb HDD (compared to the 160 Gb in the base unibody one), the HDD is much faster than the MacBooks one. a 5400rpm HDD is faster than a 7200rpm 200 Gb HDD, so it will easily blow a 5400rpm 160 Gb one away, (neither get close to saturating the SATA bandwidth). Again, in terms of raw performance, the MacBook will be faster.

You will probably see a difference with the CPU/Memory tests. The MacBook WILL win. But, the CPU difference shouldn't be more than 20%, and the memory will certainly not be 3x faster.

If you are wondering why I know so much about this, it's because I've just swapped my second gen MacBook Pro for a Unibody MacBook. I spent a long time looking at benchmarks first to make sure that the MB would be better than the MBP, and cater for my needs. When I bought my MBP, it was touted as being 10% faster than the first gen, this is why I don't think that the CPU and memory would be too much faster than the ones in the original MBP.
Click to expand...

I wasn't talking about graphic cards. The info I was referring to was the floating point etc which Apple used to post on the pages for the Macbook Pro but it seems it's no longer there.
 
bobnugget said:
A Dell and the MacBook Pro are completely different computers. If you want the higher quality computer for the same money as a cheapy Dell (and the £500 dell's are crap, we use them at work), you have to get one that is a few years old.
Click to expand...

Nevertheless, a laptop with outdated technology, 3 years old and no warranty is not a good deal. Don't let a price fool you.
 
Luis Ortega said:
Nevertheless, a laptop with outdated technology, 3 years old and no warranty is not a good deal. Don't let a price fool you.
Click to expand...

Maybe to you. Seems a lot of people in the real world don't share your opinion though.

Other people want performance (Large screen, firewire, nice design, made of good materials). They would buy a well performing laptop. Remember, just because a laptop is out of warranty does not mean it will fail. I'm running a nearly 10 year old Pismo as well as my MacBook. It has never gone wrong (although the battery only lasts 30 minutes now). A few years ago, I bought a 3 year old Powerbook 12" for £500. I ran it for a few years. Nothing went wrong with it (it was stolen in the end).

Are you also trying to tell me a maxed out 1st gen MacBook Pro 17" for £500 would be a bad deal 😱? Boxed as new and working perfectly? According to you, that is a bad deal!

Some people want a nice looking laptop with pretty good performance. You get a good one by buying an old one!
 
Buy used

Buying used is for people with the stomach, but I think it is totally worth it, especially great for the bang/buck ratio.
And you don't contribute to the buying frenzy, not everything has to be new. Just have to be picky about the seller though
 
Darn it, change the title just a bit, title threw me since it looked like you were selling the machine.

aka, advice on a purchase of a secondhand Macbook
 
Honestly, im still rocking my macbook original core duo... I planned on getting a new one once the apple care ran out (~a month left) but it still seems plenty fast. Personally, i dont think there is a big enough difference for me to drop another $1500+ right now, atleast for another year. I would however buy new with apple care, feels like your computer will last forever. It also depends on how well you treat your things.
 
bobnugget said:
Are you also trying to tell me a maxed out 1st gen MacBook Pro 17" for £500 would be a bad deal 😱? Boxed as new and working perfectly? According to you, that is a bad deal!
Click to expand...

Caveat emptor.
I would consider a refurb with a warranty but never a 3 year old laptop without a warranty, even if I was prepared to put up with outdated technology.
 
Buying a second hand MacBook or MacBook Pro could be alright, but what about the licenses of the software installed on that system? I mean, normally we tend to 'Accept' the License Agreement/ Terms and continue with the installation 😉 But that 'BIG' document does allow you to transfer license of the software that is installed?😕
 
www.mac2sell.net is a great online resource to guess the value of a used mac. It's a bit on the lowball side IMO, but it can somewhat assure you that you're not getting screwed.

The core duos run hotter than the core2's. They're not powerbook hot, but they can be a little toasty. They only take up to 2 gigs of ram max. XP on parallels or vmware needs at least 3 gigs to run decently, IMO. Therefore, I'd suggest sticking to boot camp if you want to run windows apps on it.

If you're going to be doing just consumer stuff with it, and can get it for a good price, rock on.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back