MacBook makeovers bring new life to a couple of old laptops

Nicely done! My wife and I had years of pain and agony over upgrading graphics adapters on our desktop (HP) machines. She wanted to save money and I explained that HP and others subscribe to the Gillette philosophy. Hook em on the "handle" and the blade biz comes back to you for -at least a long time. That said: We lost data, could not do a reliable restore from the HP PC using it's own recovery disks, etc. Which brings us to Macs. My daughter wanted a Mac. So I bought a refurbished one from the Mac site. Original White 2.0ish processor etc. for $900 and change. Lets just say my daughter was doing inappropriate things on MySpace so her computer was taken away. I gave did many of the same things - upgraded the memory to it's max, upgraded the 80GB disk to a Seagate Momentum 500GB 7200RPM disk and similarly used the main drive as a bonus external. What blew my mind was the simplicity of using Time Machine to restore the contents of not only what was the Mac to a new drive but (I have to admit without thinking) that I sync'd my iPhone to that machine too. The upgrade of memory and disk had nothing but postiive effects on my iPhone in that, I was able to connect, sync and do all that I wanted - as if no change was ever made. I purchased a second MB White from the Refurb area of the Apple Web Site that would be mine after having such a great experience. I did the same disk and memory upgrade (though my MB was a little faster and had a better SuperDrive) With a adapter to use an external 24" monitor and (D-Link's awesome) USB hub with several TB's of capacity along with an external DVD writer/LightScribe, etc. has given both my wife and I two machines that are excellent performing joyful to use machines with one that serves as an amazing media server for the home! Whats more - I will never again suffer the time waste, pain and agony of reloading my iTunes library with every CD I own because my HP "PC" crashed requiring a complete reinstall. Or, the pain and time loss associated with reinstalling all the drivers, patches and other BS that comes with the PC. More recently I changed our primary network from a Cisco "N" based network to a Apple Extreme Network with D-link dual band access points (with one Cisco hold out to connect a wireless printer (in our hold house that has plaster walls thereby making every room like it's own Faraday cage) We used to have to reboot the Cisco network daily, sometimes more. (It's like the old Novel NetWare vs. Windows Server stories) The Cisco home network max up time - 2 days. The Apple Extreme Network has not crashed once since being installed (more than 6 months and counting) Upgrade your Macs, Move to Mac Networks, and let the PC manufacturer's shrink with their inferior product. If more companies (and home users) calculated the cost of time, downtime, add-on software, etc. the pie chart for market share would look much different. However, it seems, like internal combustion engines and incandecent light bulbs - the PC is here to stay. And that said - I'm happy to be in the enlightened (although poor spelling) minority!! Vive la Apple!!

I have one of those first-gen Core Duo MBPs, and I have pretty much stretched it to the limit. Decided to stick at 2GB RAM, but the hard drive is now a Samsung slow-but-huge 640GB. Firewire failed on this thing years ago and I have to be finicky about external USB drives, because like a lot of Apples, one USB port is more powerful than the other.

I am now faced with having to replace the batteries. This one got a new battery from Apple's replacement program; that one's near dead. Also bought an aftermarket battery, that's just as dead. For a machine I've had for something like six-plus years, the thing can still hang with newer machines on everything but 1080p video.

I have a Powerbook G4 1ghz/ 1gb ram/ 60gb hard drive. It cost me £2,500 in 2002, it's the only computer I have or can afford, and I am using it virtually every day for video editing, web design, print design, audio production.

only recently the superdrive stopped working (but that's after 8 years so i think it's been pretty good). I would like to upgrade it but I don't there are many options in the UK.

I've upgraded 5 Core Duo MacBook Pros from 2006 so far with RAM and hard drive upgrades. The hard drive upgrades are tedious, given the amount of screws. I used iFixit guides and then scotch taping the screws to a piece of copy paper in the spot they were in on the MBP.

I have a 2.66 GHz MacBook Pro. Currently have 4 GB in memory.

Just wondering if maxing-out to 8 GB will give me a boost?

Also, have 320 GB 5400 drive. The article said going to 7200 will really make things noticeably faster. True?

The best speed upgrade I could get would be a solution to the frozen cursor problem. My 2-yr-old MBP drives me nuts with this, and I haven't found a clear answer on any forum. I lose 10-30 minutes a day just futzing around to get the cursor active again. Suggestions/solutions warmly appreciated.

I looked into adding more RAM to my mid 09 Macbook Pro and because both slots are full going from 4 to 8GB is US $279.99 on Crucial.com Late last year it was almost $800. Running Photoshop, After Effects, Premier Pro, and Adobe Bridge can really tax the 4GB of DDR3 RAM I've got. I'm hoping going to CS5 which is true 64-bit will help. I think the bump up in RAM woudn't hurt though.

Great read, and pretty relevant since I am going to be headfirst into my MBP tomorrow to replace the SuperDrive, air dust the heatsinks, and if I get adventurous, re-seat the heatsinks w/ Arctic Silver 5.

I have a 2006 15" CoreDuo MBP (10.5.something I think, 2.0ghz, 80GD HDD, 512MB RAM) that a friend gave up as it had overheating problems and constantly shut off on her. On top of overheating, the battery has about a 45 minute lifespan, the SuperDrive is dead, and the power adapter was frayed near the brick part.

For RAM, I picked up 2x1 GB chips that were pulls from pre-unibody MacBooks that the helpdesk in my office had no use for (all the machines they had deployed needed 4GB). I picked up a Snow Leopard DVD, and since the SuperDrive was busted, I ripped the image, extracted it to an old 2.5" drive in a USB enclosure, and upgraded to Snow Leopard via USB. (Cost: Free + $29)

Though not really necessary, I ordered a used SuperDrive from eBay a couple of weeks ago and it finally showed up today. (Cost: $36)

Next, I had to replace the MagSafe adapter. I didn't want to inherit some unseen problems of a secondhand one, so I picked one of the newer toothbrush-type ones at the Apple Store. (Cost: $79)

The biggest issue for this project to be a total success is to get past the overheating problem. I have SMC Fan Control installed and have the speeds cranked to 4000rpm, and this manages the hold the temperature below the power-off threshold. However, that's not a long term solution as I'm just wearing the fan bearings down, as constant 4000rpm spinning can't help their lifespan. The temperatures still top off at about 160 degrees Fahrenheit under load, and you could probable imagine the discomfort if you hold the MBP on your lap as the aluminum case disperses the heat.

Anyway, I'm hoping that a lot of the high temps boil down to an airflow issue with some dust in the heatsink fins. I'm not sure what kind of gains I'd see with reapplying the thermal paste, and although I've done this dozens of times on desktops, I don't know how ambitious I'll be in a laptop.

At the end of the day, the older MBP does run well, and I've been using it somewhat reliably for web development. Photoshop and Dreamweaver CS4, and Firefox and Chrome all work well concurrently. I've even managed to play a few games of Starcraft 2 with moderately low detail and no shut downs due to overheating.

I'm still holding off on buying a battery, so the total cost of making this machine usable thus far is $0 + $29 + $36 + $79 = $144.

If anyone wants to pass on any words of wisdom before I start wrenching on this thing to install the SuperDrive and air dust, I'd appreciate it.

Can't upgrade from 10.4 to 10.6 legally for $29...need to buy the box set at $169.

Another benefit to the MBP upgrade: mating an Intel Core-Duo with a 7,200 RPM drive will keep your client's fingers nice and warm on those cold winter nights.

Sadly, Core 2 Duo's were less efficient hand warmers. :)