I just ordered a MacBook 5,2 (Mid or Late 2009). 4GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, includes power cord and battery. 2.13GHz. NVidia 9400M How do you think that will fair until next year?
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Just ordered a Macbook 5,2
- Thread starter slooksterPSV
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For doing what? It's a perfectly capable machine for general office type work (email, word processing, etc). I'd be tempted to throw that HDD into the trash, and put in an inexpensive SSD. The battery is probably crap unless it was replaced, but at least it is replaceable. It will have USB 2.0 (slow). You can run El Cap on it, or Sierra with a bit of hackery. I assume it was very cheap, because otherwise I don't see the point in buying an 8 year old machine.
$100. I have a 128gb ssd and it’s essentially to get back into the realm of macs. I already have 4 PCs so why not a Mac
It looks good. Says new ac new battery but I’ll know when I get it. https://m.ebay.com/itm/112572387178?_mwBanner=1
I personally wouldn't touch it, not even for $100, because it's legacy and you're on your own for any parts, should they be needed in the near future. The motherboard could go, or the video card, or almost anything else, and you just could end up with a $100 headache. Even if everything is hunky-dory with the laptop, you won't have a satisfactory computing experience running the latest software on it, and High Sierra will definitely be your last macOS version running on it.
Having said that, if you're a tinkerer, and don't mind scouring the internet for obscure parts of questionable quality, this could be the machine for you. Additionally, you might be able to take it apart and sell it for parts.
El Capitan is the last supported OS for the system. It is old, but a way to get back into the groove of things provided it works. If not well buyer beware. I’m willing to take the risk.
Next year I’m planning on a new machine. Due to licensing I didn’t want to do a hackintosh otherwise my dell XPS 8700 probably would have worked.
I haven’t used a Mac since 10.4.11 on an iBook G4 Last Gen
Unless it's a MacBook Pro, it CAN run Sierra and High Sierra according to this list.
Having said everything else, it's not a huge financial risk so go for it then. Best of Luck!
Edit: Since that 5,2 laptop is not a mid or late 2009 as you stated, but an early 2009, El Cap is indeed the last OS version running on it.
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Instead of opening a new thread and asking a bunch of questions, I thought I would just pose them here (provided the system works as expected):
1) I don't have any restore media whatsoever for Mac OS X, I imagine I can create this using the system when it arrives. Right?
2) It states it comes with Lion, how do I upgrade to El Capitan? Do I have to buy an upgrade to Mountain Lion and purchase upgrades from there or will the store offer to upgrade to El Capitan?
3) Not sure what apps come on it. Where I have an iOS device with Pages and Numbers, do I get those apps for free? I don't even think the iLife suite is included (actually do they have the iLife Suite anymore?)
I'm planning on using this as my driver for school to do my homework on. Maybe some lite development (Python, C#, and Angular). Any suggestions?
To give everyone a stance on how far away from Mac I've been I started on a Powerbook Lombard (233MHz, 192MB RAM, 20GB HDD) with Mac OS 9 on it in 2004. I upgraded that to Panther and installed a bunch of utilities from Version Tracker. Changed that out for an iMac G3 (which was awesome cause Bleem allowed me to play my PSX games on it). Then I bought an iBook G3 500MHz with 320MB RAM and a 20GB HDD Mac OS X Panther in 2005. Finally, for last year of high school my dad bought me an iBook G4 which came with Tiger.
So the store is a change, versus grabbing a DMG from VersionTracker. The upgrades were always CD-Based/DVD-Based so I haven't done an upgrade from the store or know how that works.
Expose was the future and Spotlight were the biggest things we were excited about. It's been a far and long journey.
1) I don't have any restore media whatsoever for Mac OS X, I imagine I can create this using the system when it arrives. Right?
2) It states it comes with Lion, how do I upgrade to El Capitan? Do I have to buy an upgrade to Mountain Lion and purchase upgrades from there or will the store offer to upgrade to El Capitan?
3) Not sure what apps come on it. Where I have an iOS device with Pages and Numbers, do I get those apps for free? I don't even think the iLife suite is included (actually do they have the iLife Suite anymore?)
I'm planning on using this as my driver for school to do my homework on. Maybe some lite development (Python, C#, and Angular). Any suggestions?
To give everyone a stance on how far away from Mac I've been I started on a Powerbook Lombard (233MHz, 192MB RAM, 20GB HDD) with Mac OS 9 on it in 2004. I upgraded that to Panther and installed a bunch of utilities from Version Tracker. Changed that out for an iMac G3 (which was awesome cause Bleem allowed me to play my PSX games on it). Then I bought an iBook G3 500MHz with 320MB RAM and a 20GB HDD Mac OS X Panther in 2005. Finally, for last year of high school my dad bought me an iBook G4 which came with Tiger.
So the store is a change, versus grabbing a DMG from VersionTracker. The upgrades were always CD-Based/DVD-Based so I haven't done an upgrade from the store or know how that works.
Expose was the future and Spotlight were the biggest things we were excited about. It's been a far and long journey.
1) yes, google for Recovery Disk Assistant. Haven't done it myself but it all sounds reasonable.
2) You should be able to upgrade direct to El Capitan. Try https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206886 for a copy of El Capitan.
3) I think it's called iWork now. I'm not sure about pricing, I just know it's less than MS Office. The iLife stuff underwent a rewrite in ?2013? that really dumbed them down at the time, but the current version is entirely usable IMO (but my needs are pretty lightweight). I've been using Pages recently instead of MS Word because the WTF-is-it-doing-NOW factor is way less.
Updates via the Store seem to be pretty seamless. They just happen and I tend to not worry about it.
Dunno about c# on the Mac. For a C compiler, Apple Xcode switched from gcc to llvm sometime around Mavericks, and while I like the compiler, I loathe the debugger with the flame of 10,000 type-O suns ... entirely pointless and gratuitous wholesale command changes from gdb! But if you didn't know gdb to start with, you won't care. If you run into any open-source stuff that you need and isn't there, try homebrew (https://brew.sh/) which is pretty nifty. El Cap seems to come with Python 2.7, and if you need Python 3 it shouldn't be hard to install.
Edited to add: Wikipedia says you can put 8 Gb RAM into that thing. While it might sound a bit like putting lipstick on a pig, the later OSX's do like their memory. If it's too slow to deal with, SSD first, more RAM second. I'll put my usual plug in for datamemorysystems.com here. (DMS says 6 Gb in your machine, not 8; I'd believe them over wiki.)
2) You should be able to upgrade direct to El Capitan. Try https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206886 for a copy of El Capitan.
3) I think it's called iWork now. I'm not sure about pricing, I just know it's less than MS Office. The iLife stuff underwent a rewrite in ?2013? that really dumbed them down at the time, but the current version is entirely usable IMO (but my needs are pretty lightweight). I've been using Pages recently instead of MS Word because the WTF-is-it-doing-NOW factor is way less.
Updates via the Store seem to be pretty seamless. They just happen and I tend to not worry about it.
Dunno about c# on the Mac. For a C compiler, Apple Xcode switched from gcc to llvm sometime around Mavericks, and while I like the compiler, I loathe the debugger with the flame of 10,000 type-O suns ... entirely pointless and gratuitous wholesale command changes from gdb! But if you didn't know gdb to start with, you won't care. If you run into any open-source stuff that you need and isn't there, try homebrew (https://brew.sh/) which is pretty nifty. El Cap seems to come with Python 2.7, and if you need Python 3 it shouldn't be hard to install.
Edited to add: Wikipedia says you can put 8 Gb RAM into that thing. While it might sound a bit like putting lipstick on a pig, the later OSX's do like their memory. If it's too slow to deal with, SSD first, more RAM second. I'll put my usual plug in for datamemorysystems.com here. (DMS says 6 Gb in your machine, not 8; I'd believe them over wiki.)
According to this everymac list: Introduced: January 20, 2009; Discontinued: May 27, 2009.... Order, MB881LL/A, Model, A1181 ( EMC 2300). Family, Early 2009, ID, MacBook5,2. RAM, 2 GB, VRAM, 256 MB.
Not to worry, I hope things work out for you with that purchase!
The 2.13GHz says mid, but either way, its a mac =) It'll be nice to see how things have changed. Windows is becoming more stale each day =/ so flat, so uninspiring =/
It not bad at all. Its not really that slow, especially for what I'm using it for. Battery I don't think is new, it only lasts about an hour, which is fine. I'm downloading Sierra and going to do the patch on it and put it on an external drive to see if it works. All the apps I use are working great so far. Pages wants OS 10.12, so I can't install that. Everything else is just fine.