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heavy2healthy

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 19, 2009
139
0
I thinking about buying a used 2007/2008 15 inch mac book pro dont have the cash for a new one. How were those macbooks? thx
 
I thinking about buying a used 2007/2008 15 inch mac book pro dont have the cash for a new one. How were those macbooks? thx
I still use an Early 2008 MBP on average about 12-14 hours a day, every day. I've never had problems with it and it does everything I need or want. It still runs as fast as the day I took it out of the box.
 
I would use it for email ,surfing, writing papers. Nothing heavy duty like editing video. For work Im in a windows environment and my old eyes cant take cheap windows laptop screens anymore for my personal stuff. So I figured from 500 to 700 if I can get into a older macbook pro with 15 inch screen. Add some ran and an sdd and Im good to go.
 
We have a late 2008 that's still chugging right along. Just recently put an SSD in it to speed it up a bit, but other than that all it's ever needed was a replacement battery a few months ago. It's a good machine, and as long as you don't need it for anything too intensive it should work just fine.
 
MacBook pro, although great, is still a computer, and thus are bound to break some time. IMO, after a 2 or 3 years, chance of *something* going wrong exponentially increases (which is why I change machines every 2-3 years).

I wouldn't risk it, especially with laptops, as if something goes wrong other than the HDD or ram, youre looking at replacing the whole logic board which can cost as much as or more than 1k...

Unless you really need a mac (read: OSX), I wouldn't risk it.

The safest and cheapest bet would be to save up a bit more and buy refurbished, they are practically new and come with standard warranty.
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac

The cheapest in that store is $750, a 11in air with a second gen i5 which is likely going to be faster than a 2007/08 MacBook pro anyway..

just something to think about
 
Make sure you avoid the 15" with the 8600 GeForce Nvidia graphics card, those can randomly stop working at any time.

I didnt know that. thx

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MacBook pro, although great, is still a computer, and thus are bound to break some time. IMO, after a 2 or 3 years, chance of *something* going wrong exponentially increases (which is why I change machines every 2-3 years).

I wouldn't risk it, especially with laptops, as if something goes wrong other than the HDD or ram, youre looking at replacing the whole logic board which can cost as much as or more than 1k...

Unless you really need a mac (read: OSX), I wouldn't risk it.

The safest and cheapest bet would be to save up a bit more and buy refurbished, they are practically new and come with standard warranty.
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac

The cheapest in that store is $750, a 11in air with a second gen i5 which is likely going to be faster than a 2007/08 MacBook pro anyway..

just something to think about

I didnt think about that, I figured it would be hard on the eyes and a serious lack of real estate. also does the 2 gig cut it ?
 
I didnt think about that, I figured it would be hard on the eyes and a serious lack of real estate. also does the 2 gig cut it ?

you can always add a external display for when you're home

regarding 2gb ram and 64gb SSD, it really depends on what you do with it, for me, its no where near enough, but for general stuff like Word and YouTube etc, its probably enough

btw whats youre budget?
 
you can always add a external display for when you're home

regarding 2gb ram and 64gb SSD, it really depends on what you do with it, for me, its no where near enough, but for general stuff like Word and YouTube etc, its probably enough

btw whats youre budget?

Im surfing, word processing. $750 would be on the high end.
 
...regarding 2gb ram and 64gb SSD, it really depends on what you do with it, for me, its no where near enough, but for general stuff like Word and YouTube etc, its probably enough...

I'd have to disagree with this. You can get by with 2GB in Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6), but Lion and ML (10.7 & 10.8) seem to be quite a bit more memory intensive. My wife's computer is even somewhat constrained with 4GB, though hers shares that with the iGPU.
 
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