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2011 13" i5. I've upgraded the hard drive and maxed it at 16 Gigs RAM. My next upgrade will be to sad, but I'm in no hurry. My wife is using a C2Duo from 2008. That one is also maxed out, but I'm looking to replace it.
 
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It's great you've gotten at least six years out of that machine and it's still viable today.

Very true, partly because I like running stuff into the ground though partly out of necessity.

When I first bought it, I actually got the 2011 15” but due to multiple Logic Board failures they replaced it with the 2012. At the time I think it was around £1500, but my 15% student discount at the time meant I paid less than £1400 and also got free AppleCare with it. I got the base 15” model.

Now the base 15” starts at £2350 and even if I somehow applied a student discount using somebody’s credentials, that would only be 10% plus 20% off AppleCare. So there’s a grand extra than I’ve ever paid before I’ve even started customising it. I was looking to the model I wanted (15”, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD) but I can neither easily afford nor easily justify £4000 for a laptop. I wish I could because I think the new models are brilliant.
 
im using early 2011 13" mbp, upgraded ram to 8gb and storage to 500gb ssd, changed wifi/bluetooth card to a 2012 model for handoff and continuity, still runs great, I have Mojave, windows 10, and High Sierra all running smoothly. I plan on getting a 2018 15" mbp soon but still keeping the 2011.


I am using one like yours. Just replaced a 500GB Samsung Evo SSD with one from Crucial. For some reason I had some problems updating OS with the Evo (10.13x), and I could not figure it. The one from Crucial is working fine. Using OS 10.13.6, and running smoothly. Also downloaded and installed Trim Enabler, this way trim is enabled and running in the background automatically.

Haven't had a single problem with this MBP.
 
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It's great you've gotten at least six years out of that machine and it's still viable today.
Until the 6-core MBP2018 came out there had been no significant improvement in CPU performance since the quad-core i7 in the 2012 cMBP.

My partner uses a 2012 cMBP as her sole computer. We bought it used with 16GB & it still had 3 months of AppleCare. I upgraded it with a 1TB SSD when the HDD died. It's still a really capable laptop.

The 2012 cMBP is big & bulky compared to my 16GB 2013 rMBP which I recently upgraded from 512GB to 1TB with a genuine Apple SSUBX drive.

My partner's son uses my old C2D 2008 17" MBP with 6GB (max supported) & 1TB SSD. I bought that new ten years ago & it's still in daily use.
 
I am still using an early '08 MBP upgraded to 6GB ram and a Samsung SSD. Works amazingly well but I can't go beyond Yosemite and Windows on a boot camp partition does not work well (but VMWare does).
 
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I have a late 2008 MBP that currently a jukebox for my music room. Have it hooked up via USB to my 8 channel mixer to output to 2 Peavey Dark Matter 12” PA speakers. At 1000W RMS each I can definitely make ears bleed if needed.
 
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Until the 6-core MBP2018 came out there had been no significant improvement in CPU performance since the quad-core i7 in the 2012 cMBP.

My partner uses a 2012 cMBP as her sole computer. We bought it used with 16GB & it still had 3 months of AppleCare. I upgraded it with a 1TB SSD when the HDD died. It's still a really capable laptop.

The 2012 cMBP is big & bulky compared to my 16GB 2013 rMBP which I recently upgraded from 512GB to 1TB with a genuine Apple SSUBX drive.

My partner's son uses my old C2D 2008 17" MBP with 6GB (max supported) & 1TB SSD. I bought that new ten years ago & it's still in daily use.
I think if you're not doing truly taxing stuff like editing large video or audio files, the older machines are powerful and fast enough, assuming SSD's. I think you can still edit large audio and video files with an older machine---it might just take awhile.

In my opinion, the largest differentiators in the post 2012 design are related to screen technology and I/O as opposed to power (i.e., retina, IPS, DCI P-3, and now, TrueTone, USB-3, TB, TB-2, USB-C, TB 3). Nobody seems to mention that, but it's my feeling, anyway.
 
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Yeah mine gets heavily daily use. Fans always on even though it’s squeaky clean in the fans. Don’t have the balls to replace the thermal paste though I’m more likely to damage something than help it really.

Hitting the GPU bottleneck I think, mine’s the earliest Mac to Support Metal and you can really tell in FCPX/LPX.

It’s running okay, certainly better than a Windows machine, but boy will it be a step up when I finally upgrade.

It's the fans that concern me on mine. Whenever I can I am paring down open apps to reduce wear on the fans as there is a slight sound with one of them that I haven't managed to sort by taking it out and cleaning it. Should have put a new one in instead, but it doesn't seem worth it now as I am likely to upgrade in the next 6 - 12 months.

I'm going to miss the ability to open it up and tinker though. :(
 
My early 2009 17" MBP is still going strong with a Crucial SSD and a battery I replaced well over a year ago. When i got it originally, I maxed it out with Crucial RAM. I also use a late 2013 15" rMBP.
 
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I think if you're not doing truly taxing stuff like editing large video or audio files, the older machines are powerful and fast enough, assuming SSD's. I think you can still edit large audio and video files with an older machine---it might just take awhile.

It’s still okay for Logic depending on your AUs & number of stems but FCPX is almost impossible to edit with more than a few simultaneous videos in the magnetic timeline. It doesn’t playback smooth in real-time and keeps skipping frames, making editing close to guesswork.

16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, replaced my HDD SATA cable... same issue. Either my GPU’s on its way out or it’s just too old now.
 
I recently brought my mid-2009 13" 2.53 C2D out of retirement. I upgraded the OS to High Sierra using the patch and it runs great! Many years ago I maxed out the RAM at 8GB and when I upgraded to HS I also added a 512GB Samsung SSD. It runs PERFECT! Pretty amazing for a NINE YEAR old machine!

Now that said, I'm not doing anything that really maxes it out. My daily driver is a base model 2015 which I edit on full-time using Premiere...
 
2016 15". Why would I use and older unit when I have a new one?
Maybe your spouse/kid/dog is using the old one while you use the new hotness? My son used my late 2008 MBP for a few years as his Minecraft / TF2 machine before he took over my Alienware Aurora 5. :)
 
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you don't need any third party software to enable trim just type this command in terminal
Code:
sudo trimforce enable
That's true. But sometimes with third party SSDs, after an OS update or upgrade you have to enable it again, and most often than not I forget about it.
 
Maybe your spouse/kid/dog is using the old one while you use the new hotness? My son used my late 2008 MBP for a few years as his Minecraft / TF2 machine before he took over my Alienware Aurora 5. :)

My spouses and kids use bigger and faster machines than I do. :oops:

One daughter that 2 GTX 1080 TIs. Other daughter has XPS 15 with 1 TB drive, 4K touch. Wife's machine has 32 GB, GTX 1080, 32 GB of memory. Her laptops are 16 GB Surface book 2, 1TB and a high end Lenovo unit.

Around here I hear it when ping times creep over 10 ms.

Joys of living near Silicon Valley!
 
2014 macbook pro retina. runs fast still.

it will probably be my last computer. I don't do anything special on it anymore other than emails, surf, youtube.

I'll end up getting an iPad next.
 
I use my early 2008 (pre-unibody) 17” almost daily, absolutely love it. And then when I need more portability I’ll be using the 2015 13” I just got. :)
 
Did you have to change the battery? Arent those glued to the back for the retina MBPs?

I use a 2012 retina MBP (16gb RAM and a SSD) as my daily driver. Just put in a new battery. Took 15-20 minutes. Used the kite string technique people show on YouTube and used a tiny bit of GooGone for clean up.

My wife still uses my old 2010 13 inch MBP. (Had to swap out the logic board once due to liquid damage.)
 
I added a SSD to my MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010), and it still works great. I tend to do home projects on my MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014), and use a MacBook Pro 15-inch 2017 at work. I've had more problems with the 2017 than the others.
 
mid2012 15” Unibody (i7 2.3GHz, 512GB SSD, 1TB HDD, 16GB Corsair Vengeance RAM).
 
My day to day machine is a 2013 13" MBP, replaced the battery last year and it's still going strong. I've also got a 2008 17" MBP that I use as a knock-around machine for browsing the web and slicing 3D prints. (However, I might be upgrading the 2013 if Apple can fix all the (hopefully) software bugs in the next couple months ;))
Did you see any improvements in the battery life? I got a late 2011 mbp 13" and the battery is pretty bad.. tops 2 hours if I only do *light* work
 
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