Last week I picked up a 2006 15" Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro from my workplace's satellite location, presumably just sitting waiting to either be recycled or re-sold. I already have a couple of aluminum PowerBook G4s in my collection of older Mac laptops (a 17" from 2003 and a 15" from early 2005), so I thought it'd be a neat comparison...
Even with some slight differences in the case design, along with the MagSafe AC connector, the iSight webcam, and the lack of a built-in modem, S-video out and a FireWire 800 port, it's still fundamentally the same computer but with an Intel Core Duo processor rather than a PowerPC G4. So that means it runs faster and generates less heat.
This model has a 2.16 GHz Core Duo processor, 2 GB of RAM, an ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics card with 256 MB of dedicated video RAM, and it also came with a 120 GB hard drive.
When I first got it, the battery was completely dead, so dead that I have to reset the time and re-connect to the Wi-Fi whenever I plug it back in and turn it on. I already ordered a replacement battery. Additionally, the original stock SuperDrive wasn't working, so I had to use an old external USB DVD burner in order to wipe the hard drive and install Mac OS X Snow Leopard and iLife '11 via the Mac Box Set.
Of course, in addition to iLife '11, I also installed iMovie HD 6 just for that fun little throwback, as it's still fun to sometimes work with, even if I largely prefer Final Cut Pro (X) nowadays or Cyberlink PowerDirector for such video editing and effects, or the current iMovie for simpler videos.
Here I've opened up the case for swapping out the hard drive with a 256 GB SSD that I then cloned the 120 GB HDD onto, and the old SuperDrive with a newer dual-layer burning model from 2007.
The newer SSD and optical drive in place.
Here's the working SuperDrive in action, playing my DVD copy of one of my favorite "Peanuts" cartoons on DVD Player!
I then got ambitious and decided to set up a Boot Camp partition running Windows XP Home Edition SP3! Of course, I won't be doing much web browsing on it, even if I've got Firefox and the Avast Antivirus Free XP edition installed. But this way I can natively run XP without having to run a virtual machine if need be!
Even though the install CD had Service Pack 3 already installed as part of the system, it still came with Windows Media Player 9 pre-loaded onto the system, and any videos I'd try to play (WMV format, of course) came out colored funky like this. But downloading and upgrading to Windows Media Player 11 fixed that problem.
Even DV capture works on the Windows XP partition! Here I'm using Adobe Premiere 6.5, which is the version of Premiere I used at my high school's TV studio (also on XP). It does have a nice retro charm, and it works a lot better than when I try to use the Mac version of Premiere 6.5 on my PowerBook G4s!
Testing out capturing from my Sony DCR-TRV460 Digital8 camcorder into Windows Movie Maker 2. It was definitely inferior compared to iMovie at the time, but for Windows users it was definitely good for starting out in video editing before moving up to better software, like I did (using Adobe Premiere Elements and Pinnacle Studio Plus, in my case).
I will share more updates once I replace the battery!
Even with some slight differences in the case design, along with the MagSafe AC connector, the iSight webcam, and the lack of a built-in modem, S-video out and a FireWire 800 port, it's still fundamentally the same computer but with an Intel Core Duo processor rather than a PowerPC G4. So that means it runs faster and generates less heat.
This model has a 2.16 GHz Core Duo processor, 2 GB of RAM, an ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics card with 256 MB of dedicated video RAM, and it also came with a 120 GB hard drive.
When I first got it, the battery was completely dead, so dead that I have to reset the time and re-connect to the Wi-Fi whenever I plug it back in and turn it on. I already ordered a replacement battery. Additionally, the original stock SuperDrive wasn't working, so I had to use an old external USB DVD burner in order to wipe the hard drive and install Mac OS X Snow Leopard and iLife '11 via the Mac Box Set.
Of course, in addition to iLife '11, I also installed iMovie HD 6 just for that fun little throwback, as it's still fun to sometimes work with, even if I largely prefer Final Cut Pro (X) nowadays or Cyberlink PowerDirector for such video editing and effects, or the current iMovie for simpler videos.
Here I've opened up the case for swapping out the hard drive with a 256 GB SSD that I then cloned the 120 GB HDD onto, and the old SuperDrive with a newer dual-layer burning model from 2007.
The newer SSD and optical drive in place.
Here's the working SuperDrive in action, playing my DVD copy of one of my favorite "Peanuts" cartoons on DVD Player!
I then got ambitious and decided to set up a Boot Camp partition running Windows XP Home Edition SP3! Of course, I won't be doing much web browsing on it, even if I've got Firefox and the Avast Antivirus Free XP edition installed. But this way I can natively run XP without having to run a virtual machine if need be!
Even though the install CD had Service Pack 3 already installed as part of the system, it still came with Windows Media Player 9 pre-loaded onto the system, and any videos I'd try to play (WMV format, of course) came out colored funky like this. But downloading and upgrading to Windows Media Player 11 fixed that problem.
Even DV capture works on the Windows XP partition! Here I'm using Adobe Premiere 6.5, which is the version of Premiere I used at my high school's TV studio (also on XP). It does have a nice retro charm, and it works a lot better than when I try to use the Mac version of Premiere 6.5 on my PowerBook G4s!
Testing out capturing from my Sony DCR-TRV460 Digital8 camcorder into Windows Movie Maker 2. It was definitely inferior compared to iMovie at the time, but for Windows users it was definitely good for starting out in video editing before moving up to better software, like I did (using Adobe Premiere Elements and Pinnacle Studio Plus, in my case).
I will share more updates once I replace the battery!
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