Questions Regard Upgrading Macbook 5,1 (2008)

[AR28]

Hi Everyone,

I was wondering what you guys think about upgrading my MacBook
Its specs are:

2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB Ram
160 HD 5200 rpm (Stock)

My MacBook is 3 years old now and thinking its time to upgrade, Wondering what your guys thoughts are!

1)I am thinking about either upgrading the software to Lion or Snow Leopard

2)Thinking of upgrading the HardDrive to either the Crucial M4 128GB SATA SSD or the Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB 7200RPM. The price difference is only 40 dollars but my main concern is will the SSD work well with my MacBook?

3)My battery life is getting pretty bad. Im lucky to get about 2 to 2.5 hours on it with wifi off and screen brightness on low. My Battery life is 93% with 270 cycles. So not sure what I can do to increase that.

If you have any other advice it would be really appreciated
Thanks!

 

[Medic278]

Upgrading may get you some more use out of your machine. I would replace the battery for sure, if your only getting 2-2.5 hours out of it. As far as the SSD goes, be cautious. I have a 128SSD in my MBA and it fills up really fast. You may be better off getting a 500gb or 1tb 7200rpm HDD. With the HDD you will see an improvement in speed and have plenty of room for storage. The SSD just isn't that large, 128gb is not a lot, I am forever transferring files off my MBA onto my MBP or iMac to keep the SSD open. The other option, is buying a completely new machine, but thats obviously much more expensive, you will noticed a huge jump with a MBP or MBA with an i5, or i7.

 

[chibiterasu]

1. I would defiantly upgrade to snow leopard with out any hesitation even with your current specs snow leopard is quicker than leopard mainly because its intel only. I would be a bit more cautious of running lion because its a bit of a system hog I noticed a drop in performance when i went from Snow Leopard on my MacBook (specs below)

2. That hard drive sounds like a better price (especially per GB) and its 7200rpm compared to a 5400rpm that will be in your MacBook now so it will be quicker. SSD are very nice, very quick, Quite expensive and quite small e.g 128Gb. If you want a good amount of storage then is going to cost you money and I would save the money and put it towards a new machine in the future.

3. As medic said replacing it is the best way forward. Also its really easy to do in the older MacBooks as well just turn it over take out the old one pop in the new one.

Hope this all helps

 

[AR28]

Thanks for the replies! I downloaded coconut battery and I still have 85% of battery life left. So would it be worth buying a new battery? Also would the the SSD consume less battery than a new HDD and would it give me a significant performance boost? Thanks so much!

 

[chibiterasu]

85% of battery life isn't bad all my MacBook currently has 89% of its health (the one below). An SSD would help with battery life for sure (no moving parts) but I'm not sure what the difference in time would be between a HD and an SSD.

 

[flatfoot]

@OP: The Seagate Momentus XT 500GB is not just a 7200rpm drive but has an integrated 4GB SSD cache, which is automatically filled with the most frequently used files (including files loaded at boot time).

This makes it the very best price/performance choice if you want more than 128GB of storage. And as mentioned above by another member, you will want that.

 

[Macman45]

Battery? not really an issue yet, C2D ..a little long in the tooth, but if it dos the job stick.

 

[rohan.shah020]

Hi Everyone,

I was wondering what you guys think about upgrading my MacBook
Its specs are:

2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB Ram
160 HD 5200 rpm (Stock)

My MacBook is 3 years old now and thinking its time to upgrade, Wondering what your guys thoughts are!

1)I am thinking about either upgrading the software to Lion or Snow Leopard

2)Thinking of upgrading the HardDrive to either the Crucial M4 128GB SATA SSD or the Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB 7200RPM. The price difference is only 40 dollars but my main concern is will the SSD work well with my MacBook?

3)My battery life is getting pretty bad. Im lucky to get about 2 to 2.5 hours on it with wifi off and screen brightness on low. My Battery life is 93% with 270 cycles. So not sure what I can do to increase that.

If you have any other advice it would be really appreciated
Thanks!

Hi,

I used to have a black 2.4ghz macbook - similar to that of what you have...

1) in regards to lion vs. snow leopard, I'd go with snow leopard since it tends to use slightly less cpu and resources, but lion would run just fine as well

2) definitely go for the ssd if you have the money. If you are worrying about space, then maybe go for something like a wd scorpio black, but the ssd will definitely be compatible with your machine and it will certainly speed your baby up.

3) try resetting the smc... you can also try to do a full cycle reset, meaning that you completely drain it and then fully charge it... RINSE AND REPEAT - the more times you do this, the more accurate your battery estimates will be

you can also try keeping your screen brightness down, since this eats up a lot of your battery

I hope this helped...