Should I upgrade old MBP? Thoughts/Advice Wanted!!

[trilla shocka]

Hello all,

This is my first post on MacRumors, so lets get to it.

I have an older MacBook Pro that was given to me as gift from my Uncle about 2 years ago. He used to work for Apple as a senior engineer from 1988-1995, holds a few patents there as well, now runs his own company Concert Technology. So needless to say he has quite a few Apple products laying around...

I sent him a message regarding this issue, but figured I would propose it to the forum as well...


Great machine, not really sure how to tell what year it was released or what quarter for that matter so here are some screenshots...

I have a 27in iMac Quadcore 4GB Ram w/1TB HD that I bought back in Dec of 09. I use this machine mainly for web browsing, and music production. Pro Tools, Ableton Live, Reason, etc.

However I need a portable machine when I DJ or perform live. That's where the laptop comes in to play.

120 GB HD
2 GB RAM
2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Snow Leopard

When running programs such as Ableton Live 8 or Traktor Pro 2 in live situations when I am playing out live I constantly run into the problem of people requesting tracks. Almost everywhere I play has Wi-Fi so you think this would not be a problem if I do not already have the track in my library, but while running either Ableton or Traktor or both, running Safari or Firefox while searching for the track at the same time often makes the MBP run super slow and causes the pinwheel to spin. THANK GOD I HAVE NOT EXPERIENCED a complete freeze or crash mid-performance YET. But I see that day coming sooner than ever.

I have also noticed that Ableton does not run as smooth on my MBP vs my iMac. This is a no-brainer but kind of annoying. Not sure about Traktor, only have it installed on the MBP.

My question to you is

Should I buy say a 120 GB SSD and upgrade my RAM for the time being? I plan to make an upgrade to another MBP sometime in the near future. Also how high in RAM can I go with my current machine running snow leopard? Direct links to stores? Where should I buy? Total cost?



I would love to create my dream build MBP now with the new machines that were just released in October, but I have been reading online and following Apple's current trends over the past few years, a new line and complete design overhaul will probably be due sometime early next year. I am willing to wait.

When I do eventually upgrade to a new machine I will probably let my girlfriend or father take over this device. So maybe the upgrades wouldn't be so bad?

Thoughts?

 

[mgartner0622]

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/stats/macbook-pro-core-2-duo-2.16-15-specs.html

I'm pretty sure that's the model you have.
Anyways. Upgrade the ram, upgrade the ram, and, upgrade the ram. You'll definitely see a huge difference with 4GB (your machine's limit) instead of two.
Your MacBook Pro won't be able to use an SSD to it's full potential, although it will be pretty fast. I would recommend only buying one if you plan on keeping the computer for a couple more years.

Ram wise, pretty much and DDR2 667MHz SODIMM will work. For example:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820178166
That's the one I personally would buy.

 

[thefizzle657]

I have the same year MBP as you (late 2006) and the most that it can take is 3GB due to a limitation of the chipset used. I upgraded mine from 2GB to 3GB. While I could have put in 4 only 3.33GB is actually usable. I'm running Lion on it right now and it runs just fine and doesn't use up any more RAM than SL did.

As for an SSD, at least on my model only SATA 1.5Gb/s is supported so I would think that unless you plan on getting a new computer in the near future you might as well get a SATA II SSD as opposed to a SATA III. I know that SATA III is backwards compatible with II but I don't know about I.

 

[miniConvert]

I have the next model MBP (2007) and I'm just upgrading. So, as I clearly thought it was time to move on to the latest technology, that's exactly what I'm going to recommend you do.

There are some nice advantages to the new MBPs. Dual graphics, vastly improved battery life, much larger RAM expansion, i7 processors, glass trackpad, improved keyboard... I didn't have too many problems convincing myself it was worthwhile.

Your current machine would be fantastic for your girlfriend/dad I'm sure. I'm going to keep mine in use, leave it at a location I stay at quite regularly so I've got something to use without carting the new one around if I don't want to.

 

[trilla shocka]

Thanks guys!