Lifespan of a Macbook

[Boo The Hamster]

Hi,

I have a white Macbook, 2.4Ghz, 4Gb ram, which I bought in March 2008.
So far (touch wood), I've not had any trouble with it, other than the usual cracks on the front edge of the case which seem fairly typical. At the moment they're not life threatening.

I've been toying with an MBP, but having run Lion for all of 4 days, I'm now in no hurry to upgrade - I'll hang on to Snow Leopard for as long as poss.

What I'm wondering is - how well built are Apple's laptops? This is my first Mac, and while I hear of desktop machines going on and on and on, obviously a portable doesn't have such a comfy, stable environment. Mine comes to work with me every day in a rucksack, and gets moved round the house a lot (although I'll say that I do take good care of it - it doesn't get thrown about / allowed to get wet etc).

At the moment I've still got plenty of hard drive space, and it runs fast enough for what I want to do, so really I'm just curious as to how long before it goes crunch?

Or is that the same as 'How long is a piece of string?'

/waits for 'mine broke after a year and a day', followed by 'mine's still going after 10 years' replies

 

[Intell]

My Blackbook is 4 years old. Got it June of 2007. Its been tossed around, taken to college, and loved. Still works very well. Looking at the Macbook's predecessor, the iBook, you'll see that they can last a very long time. Over ten years in some cases.

 

[DockMac]

Durability

I am still using my Black MacBook from late 2006. It has lasted me nearly 5 years, my longest run with a Mac yet. My previous stint was with a Ti PowerBook for 3 years.

My Black Macbook's my primary machine, and I take it with me while I am on the go. So far, so good! Lion even works pretty well on it.

In terms of hardware, the only problem I had was with the HD that crashed in 2009. But any HD's are bound to crash.

In terms of cosmetics, I got the topcase replaced twice (on the house).

Durable indeed.

 

[Flyin Ryan]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

My 2007mbp is still running. About to be on my 3rd battery though and the SuperDrive has had some trouble. my wife's 2.0macbook white runs perfect still other than a hard drive replacement last year. Cosmetically nothing has been damaged.

I even have a PowerBook 12" g4 that ran great til the hard drive just died a few months ago.

My first modern mac was a g3 iBook and worked until 2007 when the backlight went out.

So that's a good range of apple portables. Aside from a few fixable issues, they will run for quite some time.

 

[jake4ever]

My white Macbook (2006) needed a hard drive replacement recently. Other than that, no problems.

 

[Kebabselector]

My late 2006 Macbook is still fine, I was thinking of updating but to be honest it does what I want it too. Lion works o.k. (almost seems better than my 2.4ghz 8gb mini!), so no worries for the immediate future.

Might upgrade to the 13" MBA *if* Apple do interest free credit (UK).

 

[Boo The Hamster]

Cheers!
Well, fingers crossed it'll keep me going for another couple of years yet then.

 

[Rambaud]

I bought my first macbook in 2006, and I believe it's still going fine. The new owner had to replace the battery (not unusual with the early models) after about 6 months.

I bought my second macbook in 2008 and still have it. The keyboard was replaced under warranty due to cracks around the front edge (again a fairly usual defect) and the battery was replaced under warranty due to scuff marks on the exterior - the battery was OK. The only other item that needed replacing was the CD/DVD drive - also under Warranty.

I bought a macbook pro a few weeks ago, so the macbook will be sold soon.