Using the MacBook 1,1 for a week in 2018

[Mac_Fag]

Last weekend, I got an early 2006 MacBook, the 1,1, for $10 CAD. Out of curiosity, I fired it up when I got home since I got it without a charger. The thing had no HDD so I put my 1tb drive in it since it was my spare, then installed Leopard onto it.
The battery was surprising, since it only had 189 cycles when I booted it. Original, too. I could get 3 hours of battery life out of it on Better Battery Life mode.
Then, I thought "what would it be like to main this MacBook for a week?" and then I did it: mained a MacBook 1,1 for a week. I put it through an entire week of schoolwork and the sort to test it.
And you know what?
I'm impressed. Really impressed. I cannot believe it that a machine that is 11 years old on a 10 year old OS, is still entirely usable in modern times.
If anyone tries to tell you old Macs are useless, its bull. They are ENTIRELY usable in 2018. Same with MacOS Leopard. I found a great amount of software for it and a browser (Chrome 21) that still works fine.

If anyone has any stories about using their old MacBooks in 2018, tell me.
Enjoy, guys.
-MacFag
[doublepost=1527266651][/doublepost]I also have a couple of pictures of it. If anyone wants some, just ask!

 

[luis17]

Indeed, I still give good use to my old mid 2007 macbook. You should update it to Snow Leopard if you have the possibility. It has a few drawbacks, sometimes it warms up playing 720p HD video and some software, like Mail, has compatibility problems (with Yahoo but not with Google server). I use Firefox that have supported the OS up to last year. Safari on the other hand has no useful version for Leopard for today needs. But all the rest of the apps run quite well. And if you, like me, have old files that sometimes need legacy software it's invaluable

 

[EugW]

I found my MacBook4,1 (2008) basically unusable as of about 2017 with its latest supported OS, which is Mac OS X 10.7.5. The main reason is browser support. A lot of websites are no longer compatible with browsers that work on Mac OS X 10.7.5. My bank websites don't work properly. I'm in Canada too, like the OP.

The other problem is lack of h.264 video acceleration. This makes browsing pages with a lot of multi-media content really irritating.

However, I installed Ubuntu 17.04 on it, and now use it with modern browsers. You need to block ads though to make it pleasant. The media content in the ads will bring that 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo machine with 4 GB RAM and SSD to its knees.

IMO, really the minimum is a Mac that can officially support Mac OS X 10.11, which for MacBooks means the late 2008 MacBook5,1, with minimum 4 GB RAM. I bought one last year to replace that MacBook4,1 mentioned above, even though it's just used as our kitchen machine. I installed a patched macOS 10.13 High Sierra, and use that, with SSD and 8 GB RAM.
[doublepost=1527274240][/doublepost]BTW, with that MacBook4,1, the fan was always ramping up high under any significant load. I replaced the thermal paste under the heat sink and it’s much quieter now.

 

[CooperBox]

Last weekend, I got an early 2006 MacBook, the 1,1, for $10 CAD. Out of curiosity, I fired it up when I got home since I got it without a charger. The thing had no HDD so I put my 1tb drive in it since it was my spare, then installed Leopard onto it.
The battery was surprising, since it only had 189 cycles when I booted it. Original, too. I could get 3 hours of battery life out of it on Better Battery Life mode.
Then, I thought "what would it be like to main this MacBook for a week?" and then I did it: mained a MacBook 1,1 for a week. I put it through an entire week of schoolwork and the sort to test it.
And you know what?
I'm impressed. Really impressed. I cannot believe it that a machine that is 11 years old on a 10 year old OS, is still entirely usable in modern times.
If anyone tries to tell you old Macs are useless, its bull. They are ENTIRELY usable in 2018. Same with MacOS Leopard. I found a great amount of software for it and a browser (Chrome 21) that still works fine.

If anyone has any stories about using their old MacBooks in 2018, tell me.
Enjoy, guys.
-MacFag
[doublepost=1527266651][/doublepost]I also have a couple of pictures of it. If anyone wants some, just ask!

I too use a MacBook1,1 on a regular basis. Marvelllous machine running Snow Leopard. I've used this more in the last week than I have a much newer MacBook Pro running Sierra, which I dislike. Snow Leopard, and Mountain Lion are by far my favourite OS's. Regarding High Sierra.......let's just say........words fail me!
As for sharing stories on using older Macbooks, and PPC's, look in on this site's sister PPC forum, and enjoy!

 

[robvas]

HDD is painful