Is my 2007 MBP worth repairing?

[jswift192]

I bought a MBP in August 2007 for school, and both the battery and DVD drive have since died. I don't much care for the DVD drive, but I could use another battery and I haven't seen any promising prospects for a replacement.

In addition, I need to increase performance with a SSD and possibly RAM. My laptop and its stock components are becoming sluggish in their old age.

The question is would it be wise to upgrade my hardware and find a suitable power source at this time? Any advice would be appreciated.

I hope this post is not redundant, it seems the search function has been disabled so I couldn't find anything on my own.

 

[Laco]

I bought a MBP in August 2007 for school, and both the battery and DVD drive have since died. I don't much care for the DVD drive, but I could use another battery and I haven't seen any promising prospects for a replacement.

In addition, I need to increase performance with a SSD and possibly RAM. My laptop and its stock components are becoming sluggish in their old age.

The question is would it be wise to upgrade my hardware and find a suitable power source at this time? Any advice would be appreciated.

I hope this post is not redundant, it seems the search function has been disabled so I couldn't find anything on my own.

I would certainly upgrade. The cost of a new battery, a 256 SSD or larger, and ram would be $300 but probably more than $400. If you have the money I would just buy a new laptop.

 

[Ryan1524]

Spend a bit more, and get an MBA or 13" MBP. Even the absolute base model will be faster than the 2007.

I was on a 2007 until two weeks ago.

 

[jswift192]

Thanks for your input. The reason I am looking for advice is because I can either afford to give my current laptop a boost or buy a new one which unfortunately could not be a mac.

Hopefully someone whose owned or worked with an older but enhanced MBP could offer some opinion.

 

[TechZeke]

Thanks for your input. The reason I am looking for advice is because I can either afford to give my current laptop a boost or buy a new one which unfortunately could not be a mac.

Hopefully someone whose owned or worked with an older but enhanced MBP could offer some opinion.

My advice is if you can save up some extra cash, and go without a laptop for a little bit, save the dough. You REALLY DON'T want to cheap out on something like a laptop. You really do get what you pay for when it comes to laptops. You are better off by slightly older MBP(2012 or 2011) than buying a cheap Dell or HP new. TRUST ME ON THIS.

It doesn't have to be a mac to get quality hardware on a windows laptop, but if you are paying $1000 for GTX 760M and 4700QM i7 there was a compromise somewhere, most likely in the quality of the laptop itself.

Don't worry, unlike like most on this forum, I actually understand you probably cannot afford a 3K 15" rMBP.

 

[ohbrilliance]

I have a 2007 MBP which I only just retired this week. In the last couple of years I had installed a 160GB Intel 320 SSD, keeping a 640GB hard drive in the CD bay for media files and replaced the battery. I upgraded to 4GB back in 2007.

The SSD in particular breathed new life into the machine, even though it can only run at the MBPs SATA 1 speed (150MB/s).

How much RAM do you currently have? One option is to upgrade to 6GB, which is available from OWC.

I think it's worth doing the upgrades, even if you'd like to setup a perfectly good computer for a family member to use. I upgraded because the overall speed was slowing me down as a software developer. I'll keep the old MBP around for my kids to use when they reach high school in a couple of years.


Update: I just read about your choices. If I was in your position between updating your MBP and a Windows laptop, I would do the former in a heartbeat. Call me biased, but I would much, much rather use a 6 year old mac than anything Windows-based.

 

[Freyqq]

I bought a MBP in August 2007 for school, and both the battery and DVD drive have since died. I don't much care for the DVD drive, but I could use another battery and I haven't seen any promising prospects for a replacement.

In addition, I need to increase performance with a SSD and possibly RAM. My laptop and its stock components are becoming sluggish in their old age.

The question is would it be wise to upgrade my hardware and find a suitable power source at this time? Any advice would be appreciated.

I hope this post is not redundant, it seems the search function has been disabled so I couldn't find anything on my own.

I recommend upgrading to a new one and maybe keeping that old mbp around as netflix box. The amount of upgrades and fixes you would need just aren't worth it for a laptop that old. Also, with all the 8600GT issues with that model, there could be more problems later on.

 

[Ryan1524]

I put an SSD inside my 2007 MBP roughly end of 2012. It bought me 10 months as I wait for Haswell. I wouldn't go this same route today, since the $1000-1200 MBA/MBPs have become so much better. It makes more sense to just go straight to them.

Electronics do degrade over time for various physical reasons. Your machine will start exhibiting more and more issues if you keep it. My 2007 was lucky in that I didn't get the GPU death. My ex-roommate who has a slightly newer model (also pre-unibody) killed his GPU mid-2012. He shuts his down every night, and the repeated heat-cycling killed it faster. I kept mine on all the time, and it's still working.

Late 2012, it GeekBenched at 2100 before SSD (already with 4GB ram). After SSD, it jumped to 2900. 10 months later (today), it GeekBenched at 1800. I noticed it was slowing down again, and I wasn't crazy.

Always buy the best you can afford. Yes, the initial hit more painful, but split over 3-4 years or more, it pays off.

 

[barnettgs]

You didn't say how much the ram you have and like yours, I also have Macbook Pro 2007 and I removed a broken DVD drive from it and replaced a battery with new one. Just upgraded to 6 GB and cleared out the dust and cleaned/greased the fan so it is running much cooler now.

Rather than buying a replacement DVD drive which might fail again, I bought a cheap portable DVD writer drive which works well with both PC and Mac.

 

[jswift192]

I have a 2007 MBP which I only just retired this week. In the last couple of years I had installed a 160GB Intel 320 SSD, keeping a 640GB hard drive in the CD bay for media files and replaced the battery. I upgraded to 4GB back in 2007.

The SSD in particular breathed new life into the machine, even though it can only run at the MBPs SATA 1 speed (150MB/s).

How much RAM do you currently have? One option is to upgrade to 6GB, which is available from OWC.

I still have the stock 2GB of RAM. My laptop still works pretty well considering it's age and the fact I have Mavericks installed.

My primary uses for it right now aren't that demanding but I plan on returning to school and want something reliable to work with on the fly.

 

[TmanATL]

not worth it at all to repair/upgrade a 6, 6+ year-old laptop at this point in my opinion.

Just get a new laptop would be my advice. And not the end of the world if it can't be another mac. But if your previous laptop has lasted you more than 6 years, maybe a new mac would last you just as long. It's possible.

Personally I never had a mac last more then 4 years.

 

[Riko8675309]

Enhanced MBP 2007

I just completed the upgrade you are considering on my MBP 2,2 1.67 GHz and the results are astounding.
I replaced the original HD with a 120 GB SSD and doubled the RAM from 2 GB to 4GB. Now when I start up my MBP, with Photoshp CS3 set to open on startup, the entire process takes around 45 seconds. Prior to the upgrade it would take 2-3 minutes just to start followed by another couple minutes of the spinning beach ball while I waited for Photoshop to open.
The cost of the upgrade is around $200.00 if you do the work yourself. I just followed the the instructional video on the OWC website. One piece of advice, be sure to replace the kapton tape on the logic board connection from the keyboard or it may come loose and make you think your logic board is failing.
Definitely worth while.