Which used MacBook Should I buy?

[Big Ron]

I don't know the values in the UK, so whatever I say goes off of the market in the US. Though I can't imagine it could be that far off.

On the whole mate your not too far off the UK prices, it's just supply & demand I think. They don't come up all that often and the ones that do seem to have cosmetic faults. That would just bugg me forever. I could pick up a pristine one tomorrow but it would cost me around £400, which is starting to stray into MBA and MBP territory.

I think that there could by a niche in the market for some enterprising dude your side of the pond to offer pristine macbooks to us poor Brits on my side

 

[Altemose]

On the whole mate your not too far off the UK prices, it's just supply & demand I think. They don't come up all that often and the ones that do seem to have cosmetic faults. That would just bugg me forever. I could pick up a pristine one tomorrow but it would cost me around £400, which is starting to stray into MBA and MBP territory.

I think that there could by a niche in the market for some enterprising dude your side of the pond to offer pristine macbooks to us poor Brits on my side

Have you tried your local thrift stores? In the United States we have a store called Goodwill and they have an online auction site that gets white MacBooks in all the time. Some go pretty cheaply, and some are way overpriced.

 

[Big Ron]

Have you tried your local thrift stores? In the United States we have a store called Goodwill and they have an online auction site that gets white MacBooks in all the time. Some go pretty cheaply, and some are way overpriced.

I haven't but will keep an eye out thanks

 

[AppleFanatic10]

Have you tried your local thrift stores? In the United States we have a store called Goodwill and they have an online auction site that gets white MacBooks in all the time. Some go pretty cheaply, and some are way overpriced.

I had no idea Goodwill had an online auction. I just looked and they have a pretty good selection of Macs. Thanks for the info! Now if something happens to my laptop, I know exactly where to look for a cheap replacement!

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I haven't but will keep an eye out thanks

Do they have a store like Goodwill in the UK? I've only been there a few times so I'm can't remember if they do or not.

 

[Big Ron]

AppleFanatic10 I'm afraid they dont have any UK stores

 

[Altemose]

I haven't but will keep an eye out thanks

Some will get them. To some a Core 2 Duo is a piece of trash, to others it is like a brand new machine!

I had no idea Goodwill had an online auction. I just looked and they have a pretty good selection of Macs. Thanks for the info! Now if something happens to my laptop, I know exactly where to look for a cheap replacement!

Always use the search function. I ended up snagging a PowerBook G4 for $23.50 that was Parts & Repair because they didn't have a charger. Arrived in great shape with backlit keyboard and all which was an option at the time.

 

[Aperturexs]

BrettApple

That is a beautiful machine my friend, I wish you lived in the UK, I would make you a serious offer to sell it, nevertheless:

Thanks for your kind words, I shal lhave to keep looking.

I think that's the problem in the UK, $300 macbooks get listed for £180 which equates to a macbook that is a little worse for wear and is much lower specced.

I think on your side of the pound you have the advantages of supply and demand in your favour.

I love his machine as well!

However I have a maxed out Black MacBook from Mid-2007 with the 2.16GHZ Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, and the stock 200GB HD. It hasn't failed yet, and is a great portable machine. For you I would say go with any machine that does not and I repeat does not have INTEL INTEGRATED GRAPHICS. These machines (including mine sadly *sniff sniff*) cannot run any OS higher than Lion from 2011, and have little to no graphics capabilities. Anything with Nvidia graphics will provide a much better experience and will last you years to come and make an excellent machine.

I wish you the best of luck in finding a machine, and REMEMBER: NO INTEL GRPAHICS…

PS: Look for models made from Late 2008 to Mid 2010. That seems to be the MacBook sweet spot for right now.

 

[mojolicious]

Big Ron, a couple of months ago I spent a week practically living on eBay before buying a newly listed Mid 2010 MacBook for the 'buy it now' of £300 (inclusive of delivery). The average selling price at that time was around £320.

I bought it on a hunch – nice photos, nicely worded listing etc – and was rewarded with a very decent example. Had a couple of *tiny* cracks around the hinges, but I think these are pretty much unavoidable. Also came with 4GB rather than the standard 2GB of memory, but I ended up chucking these out and upgrading to 8GB and a 250GB SSD.

I'd strongly recommend one of the A1342 unibody models – the Late 2009 and Mid 2010. They're not hugely faster than the earlier MacBooks (the final Mid 2010 model is 2.4GHz C2D, and even the Late 2006 was 1.83/2.0GHz C2D) but...

a) they run OS X 10.9 nicely (and OS X 10.10 too; same is true of the last pre-unibody MacBook)

b) the unibody casing is, I believe, more durable than the previous design: I saw enough pictures of pre-unibodies to decide that they were prone to cracking at any point around the lip where the base moulding meets the keyboard/wrist-rest, and indeed cracking of the keyboard/wrist-wrest panel itself

c) in the case of the Mid 2010, you get a significantly superior graphics card compared to previous MacBooks – might be a factor if you ever fancy firing up a game (not really my cup of tea)

d) multi-touch trackpad, hell yeah!

e) the market really doesn't reflect the improvements made over the years: a three-and-a-bit year old Mid 2010 is at most £100 more expensive than a six year old MacBook which is stuck on Lion, has (admittedly not vastly) inferior performance, and has double the miles on the clock both internally and externally

f) the prices being asked for the 13" MacBook Pro of the same era are a complete rip-off

g) you get a shiny new bottom for free! (although it's not uncommon for sellers to have already done this)

One possible downside of the unibody is that it doesn't have a FireWire port: you are forever stuck at USB2 transfer speeds. Wasn't an issue for me, and I appreciated the other change to the ports: a mini display port rather than mini DVI.

Bearing in mind my MacBook was rapidly upgraded to 8GB and an SSD (both upgrades I'd entrust to a ten year old child, it's that easy) I'd say I'm absolutely delighted with the performance. The heaviest thing I do on it is Photoshop (CS 5.1) editing of 20MB RAW files, and I really couldn't ask it to be any quicker.

If you just plan on doing a bit of Office and surfing then you can skip the SSD and can probably get away with 4GB of memory, but I'd still say that a unibody gives you the best physical durability and the greatest degree of future-proofing for a very small cost over and above the pre-Late 2009 models.

EDIT: have PMed you

 

[Big Ron]

Thanks mojolicious, also for your PM

What a comprehensive reply, I wish I had it at the top of the thread it would have aged a lot of research however:

I ended up buying a late 2009 Macbook 6.1
It has 8GBybyte of Ram and a 500GByte hard drive, Mavericks & MS Office. There are no marks or scratches and I'm totally happy with my purchase. £360 well spent.

I will certainly consider a Samsung Evo 840 250GByte SSD in due course, probably relegating the original hard drive to an internal caddy.

I agree with your comments about the earlier models, too many scratches, cracks on hinges and palm rest cracks, best to steer well clear.

Thanks again for taking the time to write a good piece of advice.

Ron

 

[mojolicious]

Bugger, I'd have been much less comprehensive if I'd noticed the week-long gap in posts!

You made a good choice and it was a nice price, given the 8GB of RAM.

Re SSD: I don't know if you'll see dramatic speed increases when you're up-and-running. The boot/wake/shutdown speeds that are really impressive, and in my case – a user account for all four family members – the speed of switching between users is just dreamy.

Other SSD benefits are cool running and total silence. In theory you'll be partially negating this if you're retaining the HDD, although in my experience (two drive Mini with user accounts on SSD and all iTunes content on HDD) audio files are magically accessed without any perceptible spinning up of the HDD.

Unless you know that it's already been replaced, do check out Apple's arse-replacement link from my earlier post.

Enjoy!

 

[gooser]

i bought a macbook last october and chose a 2009 model which was non unibody because i wanted a firewire port. if i hadn't wanted that port i would have gone with unibody model.

 

[Altemose]

i bought a macbook last october and chose a 2009 model which was non unibody because i wanted a firewire port. if i hadn't wanted that port i would have gone with unibody model.

How often do you use FireWire? I only wonder since most don't have many FireWire peripherals.

 

[gooser]

How often do you use FireWire? I only wonder since most don't have many FireWire peripherals.

not very often. i keep a bunch of movies on my macbook and occasionally i transfer them to a firewire drive to clear out hard drive space on the macbook. that frees up more space on the laptop. i also back up my music and pictures to a different firewire drive. i also have a couple of imacs that don't have usb2 so i will stick with firewire throughout all my macs for my storage needs.

 

[Altemose]

not very often. i keep a bunch of movies on my macbook and occasionally i transfer them to a firewire drive to clear out hard drive space on the macbook. that frees up more space on the laptop. i also back up my music and pictures to a different firewire drive. i also have a couple of imacs that don't have usb2 so i will stick with firewire throughout all my macs for my storage needs.

At least on the new ones, the Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter overcomes the need, especially for occasional users.