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MacBook Pro 13 Mid 2010 worth saving

J

JamesMay82

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Oct 12, 2009
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Hey Guys,

We've been gifted my parents old 2010 MacBook Pro for our 7 year old daughter. Unfortunately it needs a battery replacement which I've found on ifixit for £84 but I just wondered if its working chucking money at it given its age? It would just be to get her use to using a laptop and for her school work and sadly watching you tube videos. its got a SSD with 4 GIG of Ram.

is it worth saving? Laptop itself is in mint condition.
 
I still use my old MacBook Air 2011 with High Sierra for Adobe CS6 and MS Office 2011 for some simple things. Its still a pretty capable machine which can do basic tasks for a few more years.

Lucky seven year old to get her own Mac…
 
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mszilard said:
i reconditioned a 2009 macbook pro with new battery, 8 gigs of ram and an ssd. my son uses it a lot, i would say it worth it for me.
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Thanks for the reply, out of interest where did you pick up your battery? I did notice there are loads of aftermarket ones so want to make sure I get a good one. I'm assuming ifixit will be good quality.
 
jackoverfull said:
I have a 2009 with Catalina, it’s not very fast.
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I 'upgraded' to Mojave on my 2012: the most recent OS it can officially run. Glad I took a time-machine back-up right before the upgrade because frankly I couldn't wait to get back to High Sierra (very, very slow). So I can imagine Catalina crawls on an even older Mac that it's not designed to be compatible with.
 
MajorFubar said:
I 'upgraded' to Mojave on my 2012: the most recent OS it can officially run. Glad I took a time-machine back-up right before the upgrade because frankly I couldn't wait to get back to High Sierra (very, very slow). So I can imagine Catalina crawls on an even older Mac that it's not designed to be compatible with.
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High Sierra was pretty fast on mine.

I use Mojave on my main mac, a 2012, and it works great, in fact I was surprised by how snappy the mac feels when I bought it a few months ago. I do find it slightly buggier than the OS I came from (on a 2008), Sierra: having some apps crashing loginwindow, leaving me at the login screen, is not unheard of.

Anyway, if you don’t need 32-but support (I don’t on that machine) I feel that Catalina is a good compromise: still very compatible with newer software and still very usable.

I of course have an SSD, wouldn’t go past maverick without.
 
jackoverfull said:
High Sierra was pretty fast on mine.

I use Mojave on my main mac, a 2012, and it works great, in fact I was surprised by how snappy the mac feels when I bought it a few months ago. I do find it slightly buggier than the OS I came from (on a 2008), Sierra: having some apps crashing loginwindow, leaving me at the login screen, is not unheard of.

Anyway, if you don’t need 32-but support (I don’t on that machine) I feel that Catalina is a good compromise: still very compatible with newer software and still very usable.

I of course have an SSD, wouldn’t go past maverick without.
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Yeah that's what I meant. High Sierra was super fast on my 2012, but Catalina slowed it down too much.
 
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jackoverfull said:
Anyway, if you don’t need 32-but support (I don’t on that machine) I feel that Catalina is a good compromise: still very compatible with newer software and still very usable.
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Catalina is a buggy mess and doesn't have substantially better compatibility with newer software than Mojave.

If you want something modern, I recommend either Mojave or High Sierra. (The former has somewhat better software compatibility; the latter is somewhat faster.)
 
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Well, I have Mojave on my main (2012) Mac exactly because I wanted 32-bit compatibility, but I chose Catalina on the 2009 mainly to try it out a bit and in case I need some app that requires it. I haven’t used it often since installing it last month, but so far I have no real complaint. My girlfriend has been using it often but only for OpenOffice, zoom and some light browsing (she has a 2013 at work with Big Sur and she’s used to that).
 
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I have (had. RIP ) a 2011 15" MacBook Pro that served me mostly well from 2011. I had a couple major issues with the graphics though, but luckily, Apple had repair programs for them. But after twice failing for the same graphics issue, it finally bit the dust a couple months ago and now won't turn on at all. At this point, I don't feel like it's worth it in my case, as my general use has dwindled to just surfing the web or doing taxes. So I don't really have a use case for replacing it. However, for doing those little tasks, it certainly fit the bill. I'm debating even replacing it with something else until I absolutely feel like I need a laptop again. Granted, I don't feel like I would settle for an iPad.

If you want to do menial tasks or play old games/software on it, then I would keep it. I would have kept mine going, but unfortunately, it had other plans.
 
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DrwMDvs said:
I have (had. RIP ) a 2011 15" MacBook Pro that served me mostly well from 2011. I had a couple major issues with the graphics though, but luckily, Apple had repair programs for them. But after twice failing for the same graphics issue, it finally bit the dust a couple months ago and now won't turn on at all. At this point, I don't feel like it's worth it in my case, as my general use has dwindled to just surfing the web or doing taxes. So I don't really have a use case for replacing it. However, for doing those little tasks, it certainly fit the bill. I'm debating even replacing it with something else until I absolutely feel like I need a laptop again. Granted, I don't feel like I would settle for an iPad.

If you want to do menial tasks or play old games/software on it, then I would keep it. I would have kept mine going, but unfortunately, it had other plans.
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So if you don’t have a laptop, what do you get by with now, just a iPhone?
 
MajorFubar said:
£84 is a lot of money for a battery to put in a 12 year old machine. For my 2012 I tend to buy the no-name ebay batteries at half that price. I still get 3-4 hours charge out of them, which was pretty much as per original spec.
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I wouldn't even pay that to replace the battery in a machine of recent manufacture. For £84 I could replace the batteries in several of my MacBooks and still have money left over.
 
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entropyfl said:
Thanks for the reply, out of interest where did you pick up your battery? I did notice there are loads of aftermarket ones so want to make sure I get a good one. I'm assuming ifixit will be good quality.
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i ordered a replacement battery from aliexpress for 32 dollars ?
 
entropyfl said:
Hey Guys,

We've been gifted my parents old 2010 MacBook Pro for our 7 year old daughter. Unfortunately it needs a battery replacement which I've found on ifixit for £84 but I just wondered if its working chucking money at it given its age? It would just be to get her use to using a laptop and for her school work and sadly watching you tube videos. its got a SSD with 4 GIG of Ram.

is it worth saving? Laptop itself is in mint condition.
Click to expand...
If you can up the ram on it (not sure if that model year allowed) - would be totally usable to this day. Besides, while I have lots of respect for iFixit - amazon carries cheaper options, although on those YMMV, but the ones I ordered were seemingly ok so far/
 
I still use my GREAT MacBook Air 2010 with MOJAVE rules! for Adobe CS4 as an Office since 2011 for some heavy photoshop comics and pictures things. It's still a pretty, shiney capable machine which can do any tasks for a few more years. AND the battery still hold a 2-3 hour charge were ei run out before the MacBook air does.
 
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Besides from my post above, im using a 2008 mbp 4.1 17 inch as a work machine as well. It is stuck on ElCap and i had to patch the ssl isue on browsers, but even that machine is ok with a bit of patience...
 
DenisK said:
Besides from my post above, im using a 2008 mbp 4.1 17 inch as a work machine as well. It is stuck on ElCap and i had to patch the ssl isue on browsers, but even that machine is ok with a bit of patience...
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This would run at least up to high Sierra very well with dosdude’s patch. I know because my main mac until a few months ago was a 2018 15 MBP.
 
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DrwMDvs said:
Pretty much just my phone. I do have a 2018 15" MacBook Pro from work that I use when needed.
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Yeah I’ve pretty much got the same use case now. Never thought I would be but I’ve just gotten use to it.. I tend to just use my Mac for spreadsheets and perhaps a wordy email.
 
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Worth it to me. the MacBook Pro 2010 is still a decent laptop depending on what you use it for. I use it with older programs that will not work on newer OSs. The range of OS's is good on the MacBook Pro: from Snow Leopard to High Sierra (can use a patch to update to Mojave or Catalina also). my version was able to add 16 GB of RAM. I used a patch on my Mac mini 2009 and it runs Catalina good for most things. Put SSDs in both and what a difference!

Is it worth it? It depends on what you will use it for. Still good for general usage even today.
 
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