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How often do you college students replace a Macbook Pro?

D

DrJames

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 5, 2012
44
1
Hi There,

I'm a college student and I was wondering how often some of you college students or HS students replace your MacBook/MBP.

I bought the current version cMBP that Apple still has on their website with a few upgrades (processor, HDD, etc.) and it works perfectly but I am paranoid that something will happen to my "baby." :eek:

But regardless of that, how often have you replaced/upgraded your MacBooks? Just curious.
 
DrJames said:
Hi There,

I'm a college student and I was wondering how often some of you college students or HS students replace your MacBook/MBP.

I bought the current version cMBP that Apple still has on their website with a few upgrades (processor, HDD, etc.) and it works perfectly but I am paranoid that something will happen to my "baby." :eek:

But regardless of that, how often have you replaced/upgraded your MacBooks? Just curious.
Click to expand...

I replace on usage. My last Macbook was an 06, it handled all my daily tasks and handeld light video/photography editing. However, recently I've been doing more photography/video and I've been doing more with edits and frankly the Intel GMA 950 couldn't keep up with the newer software I was wanting to use.

I mean I still use my 06 as web browser for whenever I'm downstairs and keep this one upstairs/when I go to school.
 
I got my MBP in 2007 when I started college. I still have it.

The screen stopped working this year so it’s now a desktop machine connected to a monitor, and I will be buying a new MBP when the retina line is updated with Haswell.
 
I will be a senior undergrad in the fall.


I have replaced my MBP one time, but only because of a bunch of stupidity. My friend (who shall remain nameless) knocked my dual core i7 15" antiglare (my baby) off a chair in one of our dorm's lounges freshman year. It still worked fully after that, and I even typed an entire conference paper on it without issue. However, the hinge was totally busted. The left side was cracked and made everything nice and crooked.

I took it to the Apple store in Shadyside (Pittsburgh, PA) and told them that I would pay whatever just for them to make it right again. They agreed, and I handed the machine off. Turns out that during the replacement process, they snapped the display connector off the logic board. D'oh. They did a logic board replacement for free, but then the machine threw all kinds of kernel panics. OS X reinstall, different RAM, nothing worked. Two more logic boards go by. Apple has $2100 into this already $2500 machine now. I told them I want a replacement.

Here I now am with the machine listed in my sig. Had it not been for multiple instances of idiocy, I'd still be on the original.
 
I keep a laptop until I see a need for a new one. After my wreck I couldn't carry hardly anything in my bag, so I needed the lightest laptop possible. I ended up with my MBA. I imagine it will last me until it dies since I will be upgrading the desktop soon to do any heavy work.

I don't quite understand people who have to replace computers every year or two just because something newer and faster is out.
 
When I first started uni in 2008 I got a white macbook. But I didn't have apple care, and 18 months in the logic board went caput - it wouldn't charge battery nor run off the mains. Given the UKs generous 14% student discount, I decided to sell it for parts and get a 2010 13" mbp.

It was my baby and ran perfectly until I spilled water on it a couple of months ago. Logic board was fried, so again I sold for parts (got £200 for it) and just ordered a new MBA, with 8gb ram (for £880) which is on its way. Was the mbp alive, I'd still be using it (though likely would have upgraded next year anyway before my MA student discount ran out).

Bottom line: I've replaced not because I needed or wanted to.
 
I bought a 2006 MBP in my second year when I started at university. I still use it daily while I finish my PhD. Granted, nothing fancy apart from spreadsheets, PDFs and word processing - But after my SSD upgrade it is much faster at most stuff than my 2011 iMac. I love that thing.
 
I've had the 15 inch Retina since launch day last year and it's been running good, besides really strange performance hiccups when waking up from deep sleep. If battery life on the Haswell models is something crazy like double the old models, I'll be really tempted to upgrade, but I'm going to try and hold off.
 
I had the original unibody that I ordered in October 2008, a loaded up CTO 2.8 Core2Duo machine with 4 gigs of RAM and IIRC a 320 GB 7200 rpm HDD. Top of the line $3k machine at the time. Loved it to death.

Long story short, in October of 2010 Apple replaced it with a 2.66 i7 Arrandale machine with 4 GB RAM and a 7200 RPM 500 GB drive. It's been plugging along just fine since then, almost three years now without going back to Apple a single time.

Although it is a better machine than the original one I ordered, and still works perfectly fine, I'd really like to upgrade to a new rMBP, but just can't justify it at this time when the wife needs a computer before I do, and when this one still plugs away just fine.

I would have no problem going 5+ years on a loaded top of the line machine that I special ordered and loved.
 
I've had several repairs, but I have yet to replace my 2009.

For the last two years it had a recurring sleep issue (sometimes wont wake up) that burned through my original and a replacement hard drive as well as several hard drive cables. Despite all that, I just upgraded the RAM and planning to get Mavericks.

My uses are pretty much limited to web surfing and Word as well as watching movies. Nothing too taxing.
 
Although it's been a few years, I've replaced based on usage, rather than a set time frame. I used a lot of very very old Macs that I bought second-hand for <$100 when I was in high school. When it came time for college, I got an iBook G3 - it lasted me about three years, but I ended up supplementing it with a Mac mini as I was doing some video editing and design work and the slow G3 and weak GPU couldn't keep up.

The next upgrade came about 3 years later when I went to grad school - my iBook was on its last legs and I needed a machine that could go with me to long classes (and I was itching to finally make the transition to Intel). That machine lasted me through grad school and for another few years.

Today, it's tough to say, but I think that if you buy a decent Mac to start off your college career (splurge on RAM if it's soldered onto the motherboard), you take care of it, and can live without the latest and greatest, it should be able to hold up through a normal four-year undergraduate program. It you end up with a cMBP, you can do a few more upgrades later on to get some additional life out of it.

Many friends who were a couple of years behind me had started off college with PCs...a number of these were your run-of-the-mill $400 consumer models, but those wore out much quicker. Many replaced them with Macs halfway through college and still have them today (or have just replaced them).
 
If I can get a good sellback, I upgrade every year. If not, I hang onto it for 2-3 years.
 
I had plans to keep my 2012 13" cMBP, but after a year of use I thought I'd sell it for not much of a loss in anticipation for the 13" retina MacBook Pro I was expecting to be released following the WWDC a few weeks ago.

But as many of you probably know, the new MacBooks weren't released, so now I must wait until they are as I sold my cMBP a week before WWDC.
 
I bought an early 2008 MBP, and still use it today. The screen is broken so I have to use an external monitor and it's pretty slow these days for my needs.

Waiting on the Haswell rMBP to launch already. Apple's taking their time with Back to School too.
 
I have had a 2010 MBP since summer '10 and it is still going strong. I don't see why this computer wouldn't last another 3 years, but I have recently been fighting off the urge to buy a rMBP and now a new MBA, so I upgraded the computer to 8GB of RAM and put in an optibay with a 128 GB SSD to try and hold me over.
 
My three daughters went through college and well into post grad with the Mac Laptop purchased when they were freshmen.
 
b3av3r said:
I don't quite understand people who have to replace computers every year or two just because something newer and faster is out.
Click to expand...
Well said. I had the same MacBook Pro from the end of college through graduate school and then through part of medical school (about a five-year period) because it did what I needed and was working just fine. I would still be using it right now if it weren't for the generosity of my parents, who offered to pay for an upgrade that I could not afford myself. That original MBP is now being used by my wife, just a few months away from entering its sixth year of service. I would love to upgrade more often but can't afford to.

My general expectation with the MacBook Pros is that they'll last for at least four years, although I'd be disappointed if they didn't reach five.
 
I try and upgrade every 2 years, since I can sell my MacBook Pro's for nearly the same price I bought them 2 years ago on Kijiji and then just pay the difference (Usually less then $200) for the new model.
 
Undergrad
I started college in 2003

1) For the fall, i got a 1ghz emac. It had 512mb of ram and an 80 gig hdd.
I had this computer from 2003-2006.

2) In 2006, I wanted something portable, so I got a 2.0 core duo black macbook. It had 512mb of ram and an 80 gig hdd as well. I upgraded it to 2gigs and 250 later on. I had this machine from 2006-2010.

Those two machines encompassed my collegiate undergrad years.

Grad School
3) For grad school, I bought a used 2010 white unibody macbook as I needed more than 2gigs of ram from the blackbook. I bought this in late 2010 and had it until 2012. This had 250gig hdd and a 2.26ghz core2duo. I upped the ram to 8 gigs as well on this machine

4) This white macbook then started having cracking issues so I wanted to get a new one and I had the means. In June 2012, I bought the still cureent baseline 13in mbp. I have upgraded it to a 500gig ssd and 16 gig of ram.

These two machines got me through grad school. I anticipate 1-2 years more with the current machine, maybe longer.
 
Most people I know buy one notebook when they start at university and only ever replace it if it dies. Very few or barely any student has the latest as most proper students don't have too much money or not any time on their hands to play with toys between parties and studying.
At the end of the day you don't actually need much speed for any major/minor. You just don't need it. It is only tech nerds that want newer faster stuff or gamers.

I got my MBP when I replaces an older Samsung which I bought before university while I did military service (mandatory in our country and boring). My Samsung was 4 years old, had barely any battery life, was too slow and didn't get any decent Windows 7 drivers. It shut off repeatedly and sometimes need a few tries to start up again.
My current MBP is also 3 years and something now. It is about now that I start looking for new stuff as I want more battery life and a bit more speed. I am looking for a 15" Ultrabook with a great screen and ideally a 28W Haswell or a HD 5200 Haswell.

The only people who replace their notebooks more frequently either have some work that actually requires and just studying never does and due to work usually way more money than normal students. Most people who replace stuff often are older (middle aged) tech nerds with a healthy salary not 20 something students.
 
Arcadia310 said:
I've had the 15 inch Retina since launch day last year and it's been running good, besides really strange performance hiccups when waking up from deep sleep. If battery life on the Haswell models is something crazy like double the old models, I'll be really tempted to upgrade, but I'm going to try and hold off.
Click to expand...

Mine was having the same issue, and then I found this

http://www.ewal.net/2012/09/09/slow-wake-for-macbook-pro-retina/

Ever since I did that this thing has been running like a Swiss watch.
 
dusk007 said:
Most people I know buy one notebook when they start at university and only ever replace it if it dies. Very few or barely any student has the latest as most proper students don't have too much money or not any time on their hands to play with toys between parties and studying.
At the end of the day you don't actually need much speed for any major/minor. You just don't need it. It is only tech nerds that want newer faster stuff or gamers.

I got my MBP when I replaces an older Samsung which I bought before university while I did military service (mandatory in our country and boring). My Samsung was 4 years old, had barely any battery life, was too slow and didn't get any decent Windows 7 drivers. It shut off repeatedly and sometimes need a few tries to start up again.
My current MBP is also 3 years and something now. It is about now that I start looking for new stuff as I want more battery life and a bit more speed. I am looking for a 15" Ultrabook with a great screen and ideally a 28W Haswell or a HD 5200 Haswell.

The only people who replace their notebooks more frequently either have some work that actually requires and just studying never does and due to work usually way more money than normal students. Most people who replace stuff often are older (middle aged) tech nerds with a healthy salary not 20 something students.
Click to expand...

I'm a grad student and I have a pretty decent collection of newer technology, including a Retina MBP. I also expect a lot out of my computers (I do a lot of work in SPSS statistical analysis and some C Sharp coding as well as working in Illustrator) so I tend to upgrade more often than your average user. I get a new MacBook every 2-3 years depending on the significance of the update.

I'm also married with a 5 year old and own my own home, so I suppose I'm not your typical student.
 
Had to replace once, due to a friend spilling a...beverage...on my old machine. Luckily I had accidental damage protection from Best Buy, so the entire machine was covered.
 
I try to use all my electronics for at least 5-6 years... Had my crappy DELL desktop for 5 years, I currently have my iMac, & that is 3 years old, hopefully it'll last me trough 4 years of college, & going to get a rMBP in August. So that should last me 4 years and then some unless something happens to it. C:
 
Bought a mac mini in Aug 2012, sold it in Feb 2013 to buy the 13" MBP. This month I sold that 13" to get the 15" rMBP. Im not sure if this is a pattern I should be worried about, going through 3 macs in less than a year...
 
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