SSD benefits in an 08 MacBook?

[Krio]

I gave my old 08 MacBook to my mother in law and its starting to get on her nerves speed wise. She doesn't need a big one: 64 GB would suffice, so it would be relatively cheap. Would an SSD cut the reaction time to make the computer last another couple years or will there be other bottlenecks and I should I start looking for a used sandy bridge powered laptop?

 

[Weaselboy]

I put an SSD in a 2008 I had and it made a nice usability difference in day to day computing. I think it would be a great upgrade. Particularly for the price of a 64GB SSD. Make sure it has at least 4GB or RAM also. For light surfing like that etc. more than 4GB is probably not needed.

 

[Stetrain]

I put one in my 2008 aluminum Macbook and it definitely does make a difference. It mostly removes the annoying pauses when opening apps and files and when waking up from sleep.

 

[brop52]

Yeah make sure the RAM isn't the bottleneck. I don't know what your mother in law is doing but mine runs fine. (Though if you only have 2GB and a lack of HDD space available I could see it).

 

[Krio]

Thank you for the replies. I installed the maximum amount of ram it would accept shortly after purchasing it, so that shouldn't be an issue. She just got her first smart phone (ip5), so I think her slowdown is more perceived than anything. I'll keep my eyes peeled for a deal on an ssd in the near future.

 

[K0BI]

consider a hybrid drive?

I put a Seagate Momentus XT in my 07 MB and it works great. Boot time is very fast, and I still have lots of storage (500GB). They are also a lot cheaper than a SSD.

 

[l.a.rossmann]

SSDs are worthwhile in any laptop made after 2005, IMO. Hard drives need to be eradicated as anything other than a medium to dump files onto when they're not being used. They slow down the modern computing experience.

 

[JHUFrank]

Did an SSD upgrade on our old 2008 Unibody and it was a huge difference in performance.

 

[east85]

Yeah, it makes a huge difference. The SSD along with 8GB of ram has made this machine extremely fast for most tasks. I don't see myself replacing it until it dies, though I've entertained selling it in the past I'm just too attached. I don't see many of them around either anymore. I'd recommend just going ahead and maxing the system out, it's not too expensive to do it.