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MacBook Pro 13" early 2011 upgrade
- Thread starter cebixd
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If you plan to keep using it, sure. Both those upgrades will make a difference, especially the SSD.
Yeah I do, i dont see a reason why not, works great. Only the battery is worn out
You can get decent their party batteries from Amazon.
I think the 2011 is considered vintage by Apple so they won't even replace the battery if you paid for it. It doesn't make sense since the 2011 13” uses the same battery as the mid 2012 13".
I upgraded an early 2011 13" with a Samsung 850 Evo and it made a huge difference in performance. I later upgraded the ram to 2x4 and replaced the optical drive with a 750 mechanical drive.
I think the 2011 is considered vintage by Apple so they won't even replace the battery if you paid for it. It doesn't make sense since the 2011 13” uses the same battery as the mid 2012 13".
I upgraded an early 2011 13" with a Samsung 850 Evo and it made a huge difference in performance. I later upgraded the ram to 2x4 and replaced the optical drive with a 750 mechanical drive.
I don't have the MacBook anymore but it was great for my purposes which included email, office 2016, Safari, iTunes, and movies. No slow downs, apps boot fast, didn't really use virtual memory since I had 10 GB of ram.
]I just bought a samsung Evo 860 500GB to replace my Hard Drive from my MacBook Pro 2011. I also bought a new battery since mine is very old.
I can’t wait to test it. It will arrive Monday from Amazon
My laptop has a Hybrid right now 750Gb 8gb ssd e the rest is a 7200RPM drive. This new SSD should makes things snappier.
I can’t wait to test it. It will arrive Monday from Amazon
My laptop has a Hybrid right now 750Gb 8gb ssd e the rest is a 7200RPM drive. This new SSD should makes things snappier.
Give me a feedback once it arrives
[doublepost=1535964525][/doublepost]I have a question. Will i benefit from downgrading my mac OS? I dont need the latest features i just want perfomance. Maybe some other OS uses less ram or something
To me it was very worthy. 100 bucks for a 500 GB that’s all I need really is not that much money for the amount of performance it gained. Thinks are much quicker, que laptop uses less battery, stay cooler than before and of course it’s super fast now. Apps open super quick.
I liked it. It will serve me well for a while now.
I just upgraded my 15" Early 2011 to 16GB of RAM, so I'm pretty much maxed out at this point. The SSD is a night and day difference, I did that the second day I owned it, it's now on it's second SSD (failure), third logic board (2 failures), second battery (failure at <200 cycles), and third set of RAM (upgrades).
Most people probably don't need 16GB, but I'm taking some classes where we have to run multiple VMs at the same time, so it's really nice to not have to manage down RAM on each VM to the lowest possible amount, which is why I finally upgraded a 7 year old machine.
Most people probably don't need 16GB, but I'm taking some classes where we have to run multiple VMs at the same time, so it's really nice to not have to manage down RAM on each VM to the lowest possible amount, which is why I finally upgraded a 7 year old machine.
I have an Early 2011 MacBook Pro. I swapped out my HDD for a 1Tb SSD. It goes like the clappers now! I'm talking about a 20 times speed improvement! A laptop that was ready to be consigned to the bin is now awesome and faster than many of the newer models like the MacBook Air that we had in the office bought in 2014! Upgrading the memory to 8Gb made little difference in contrast but it did allow me to open slightly larger Excel files.
My one piece of advice.. buy a separate external HDD and do an image backup very regularly so if the old MacBook goes pop one day all is not lost! I back mine up every 2 days. It takes 5 hours over night. And because it's an air gap if in the meantime a Ransomware occurred then I have a my backup to revert to. Believe me when I say backup is essential if you are saving any critical information, files or data on your laptop. The image save means I can always simply open up the MBP and switch the drives.
By the way I suffered a failure of the drive cable after 4 years. A knowledgeable Genius at the Apple Store told me what my problem was when I took it in asking why it was not booting. 2 days later the part arrived and took 30 mins to replace - super easy to do. Problem solved. Fingers crossed it carries on running like a dream.
My one piece of advice.. buy a separate external HDD and do an image backup very regularly so if the old MacBook goes pop one day all is not lost! I back mine up every 2 days. It takes 5 hours over night. And because it's an air gap if in the meantime a Ransomware occurred then I have a my backup to revert to. Believe me when I say backup is essential if you are saving any critical information, files or data on your laptop. The image save means I can always simply open up the MBP and switch the drives.
By the way I suffered a failure of the drive cable after 4 years. A knowledgeable Genius at the Apple Store told me what my problem was when I took it in asking why it was not booting. 2 days later the part arrived and took 30 mins to replace - super easy to do. Problem solved. Fingers crossed it carries on running like a dream.
Apple have since hobbled this MBP by preventing it from being upgraded to the latest OS. However, my mid 2012 MacBook Pros (I have 2) both run Catalina. Both these have been self upgraded to 16Gb RAM and 2Tb SSDs. Configured like this they cost me approx £700 each compared to the newest MBP equivalent which would cost £3199.
IMHO this remark doesnt make sense, other than negativity without a purpose.
Besides, prices dropped significantly compared to 7 years ago ; )
Yes, I'd install a SSD and max out the RAM.
I've done that on several MBP e.g. 2009 and 2012 and performance increases a lot .
As mentioned by others, you could also install ( the original) HDD in the DVD bay for more data storage (adapter caddy is ~ 10,- ).
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