would an old macbook work for me?

[gooser]

primary use: i buy and sell dvd's and cd's for a living and a lot of dvd's pass through my hands and a lot seem to go before i have a chance to watch them. i'm thinking about an old macbook with a large hard drive so that i can rip them while i legally own them and play them on my tv at my convenience. i need 10.6 so that i can use front row. i would keep the macbook on top of my stereo cabinet hardwired to my tv directly below it and view in clamshell mode. has anyone else ever tried anything like this and were you pleased with the results? sort of like the original apple tv.
secondary use: my financial situation has recently improved a lot and i want to start taking vacations several times a year and would like a portable computer to fart around on when i'm away. i have a few old imacs that i prefer to use when i am at home. let's just say i'm not a tablet sort of guy.

opinions? these old macbooks really aren't expensive right now.

 

[madmacfan]

primary use: i buy and sell dvd's and cd's for a living and a lot of dvd's pass through my hands and a lot seem to go before i have a chance to watch them. i'm thinking about an old macbook with a large hard drive so that i can rip them while i legally own them and play them on my tv at my convenience. i need 10.6 so that i can use front row. i would keep the macbook on top of my stereo cabinet hardwired to my tv directly below it and view in clamshell mode. has anyone else ever tried anything like this and were you pleased with the results? sort of like the original apple tv.
secondary use: my financial situation has recently improved a lot and i want to start taking vacations several times a year and would like a portable computer to fart around on when i'm away. i have a few old imacs that i prefer to use when i am at home. let's just say i'm not a tablet sort of guy.

opinions? these old macbooks really aren't expensive right now.

From what you've said above a macbook would do the job, As for front row, You can get it to run on lion 10.7 and mountain lion 10.8 with a simple hack. i've got it running on my macbook in sig on 10.8.4 and it works a treat. As for old MacBooks, the unibody late 2008 aluminium, mid 2009, late 09 unibody and mid 2010 unibody models are probably the most reliable in terms of longevity and can be easily upgraded to take 8gb of ram and a decent SSD. They're also good value for money at the moment and are currently still supported by apple, by way of os updates and repair programs.

 

[gooser]

thanks. i think i'll give it a try. i'm not looking for blu-ray quality but i do want the movies to look good. i think i'll go with the last polycarbonate model (2009 2.13ghz) as it has a fiirewire port and all of my backup drives are firewire 400.