Need Advice on Old Macbook Pro

[Meb3891]

I have a late 2013 15-inch Macbook Pro. Unfortunately, the battery recently started to swell. I checked with both Apple and a 3rd party repair shop in my town and both want $200 for the repair. IMHO it doesn't make sense to invest that much in an 8-year old machine. However, I am very annoyed that I now have a $2500 paperweight that was otherwise 100% functional and pre-swelling, in pristine condition.

Before I try selling it on eBay for parts or simply handing it to Apple to recycle is there anything else I should consider? Going the DIY route to do the repair myself seems very risky and daunting so that is one avenue I don't think I want to consider.

Also, is there a way to remove the hard drive and put it in an external enclosure? I have the 512GB SSDs but wasn't sure if it would be compatible with something like this.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[davedirect]

If the machine otherwise operates normally and how you need it to perform, I’d say that $200 is actually a small cost to pay for getting maybe another year or two of use out of it. Will it meet your needs if you use it for another year? How much is the resale value?

My other thing I’d like to ask is how much would a new machine with your needed specs cost you to purchase? Im a pretty frugal guy and when I ask myself how I should approach a buy, it not only comes down to how much the machine costs me to own every year, but also how much a new machine would cost me to use every year. If I’m in the 8th year of using a laptop, that has now lasted my expected amount of time and anything past this point is a bonus. $200 for another year or two of use is excellent.

Another brand new $2500 laptop plus 5 years of AppleCare would be roughly $3000. (An 8 core 14” MacBook Pro is $100 a year for AppleCare+, if I remember correctly.) If you used this computer for another 8 years it would cost you $375 a year to own. That’s not factoring in taxes or any service fees you could possibly pay under the apple care program, let alone paying for fixes that may be needed after your 5 years of AppleCare are up. This could easily all add up to roughly $400 a year to own a new computer.

How much is that $2500 worth to you spent and invested in other areas of life? At the same time, how rough would it be for you if your computer died and you had to wait 4 weeks for your new laptop? Do you have another computer in the house that you could use to get by on until your new laptop arrived?

If it’s risky or daunting doing the repair yourself, I wouldn’t bother with it tbh.

 

[Meb3891]

Thanks for the thoughts, I'll definitely take that into consideration.

If I do decide to part with my machine, is there an external case I can put my hard drive into? As I mentioned, I found this M.2 NVME SSD Enclosure but I am not sure it is compatible with the SSD in my machine. Any insight would be very helpful!

 

[davedirect]

Thanks for the thoughts, I'll definitely take that into consideration.

If I do decide to part with my machine, is there an external case I can put my hard drive into? As I mentioned, I found this M.2 NVME SSD Enclosure but I am not sure it is compatible with the SSD in my machine. Any insight would be very helpful!

You’re welcome. I’m not terribly familiar with pulling SSDs out and into external enclosures but I’m sure there are others on here who are more knowledgeable.

 

[Fishrrman]

Agree with davedirect above.

$200 is a decent price to pay.
For that money, you get:
- a new Apple-labeled factory-spec battery
- installation
- a short warranty.

It's almost "a bargain".

 

[rgarjr]

Another perk about getting it replaced by apple is that they don’t just replace the battery but the whole unibody with a fresh one. Don’t know if it includes keyboard and trackpad.