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bobnugget

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 15, 2006
422
214
England
Here's the awesome, but unreleased 2.0 GHz Core Duo MacBook Pro 17" - just fired it up to try out the new Firefox port and thought I'd share it. I bought this from a recycler as parts and spent a fun few evenings putting it back together a few years back. The screen panel, battery and hard disk are not original. I've got some internal pics too if anyone is interested
 

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Ooh, very nice find. It looks really similar to the PowerBook 17 G4 which I owned for 6 years. Those silver keys were cool. The laptop used to get pretty hot as I recall and it was dog slow coming down to the time I parted with it. I'm happy you restored this Intel version!
 
Ooh, very nice find. It looks really similar to the PowerBook 17 G4 which I owned for 6 years. Those silver keys were cool. The laptop used to get pretty hot as I recall and it was dog slow coming down to the time I parted with it. I'm happy you restored this Intel version!
Yep, I really like this design. Main difference with the released version is the slower CPU and the upper case is slightly different, the speaker grilles aren’t quite the same.
 
I owned a couple 17" MBP myself, first the old school model like yours that my dad gave me when I started college, then the unibody 17" late 2011 MBP. The GPU fried in both laptops but I have to say these behemoths were Apple's finest and sexiest and most comfortable to use laptop ever.
Wish they'd make a 17" OLED retina HDR MacBook Pro soon, I'd happily go bankrupt to get one.
 
Loved the 17 inch MBP's. Hoping for a nice 16 inch soon. Reading this thread, I flipped over to eBay. Someone is selling a brand new shrink wrapped 2011 17 inch MBP for $4,000. LOL.
 
My first Apple laptop was my PowerBook G4 17"
Absolutely adored it

I do really wish they'd kept making 17" models up into the 2015 era (last gen of laptops I actually love). I might be using it right now if it'd ever gone retina and been updated into 2015.
 
I still use my early 2011 MBP 17 with BTO 2.3Ghz I-7. It's got 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and updated 802.11AC wifi (no dongle, the internal card was replaced and upgraded!)

For the last eight years, I have refused to buy any laptop from Apple unless they release a larger screen version of what's available now. When they disco'ed the 17, I felt that the current machines were lame and still do (my opinion). I bought almost every 17 inch portable machine from Powerbook on up that they released.

I am still running the original motherboard and have never had the inevitable GPU failure.

Love this machine. I hope whatever they are rumored to come out with is a major upgrade from the current 15 inch machines and how they are configured.

I would LOVE to have the modular setup a TOTL Lenovo or Dell Precision workstation offers from Apple, reminiscent of the old Wallstreet machines that you could put anything in the bays and internals were upgradeable (even the processor!!)

Everything now is disposable or hinders self repair. Sometimes progress sucks.
 
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