upgrading late 2008 macbook pro ..help..

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I have a late 2008 15 inch mac book pro (aluminum uni-body). First off I need to get a new battery, the one I have only last 2 hours at the most. I am in school for post production work, so I do a lot of video and photo editing on final cut and Photoshop. I like using the laptop because I can take it in the field with me as im working on a project be able to do some real time edits as im shooting, however the battery life is main issue, I have 8 gigs of RAM i installed so far, I don't know what I should upgrade next and what would be the smart thing to do, in terms of better hard drive, or graphics card if possible etc. I am a newbie to the upgrading part of a laptop, so any helpful advice I would greatly appreciate, I love my MBP I want to make it the best and fastest it can be to last as long as it can, I cant afford to buy a new one , im on a student budget. Thanks .
 

pigoo3

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The only things that can be upgraded on your laptop are the ram and the storage (HD or SSD). Nothing else is upgradeable.

Of course get yourself a new battery if it needs it.

- Nick
 
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which is better long term wise, as well as cost wise, a higher capacity HD or SSD? is there any way to easily and affordable upgrade the processor or graphics card in the macbooks, im asking this cause Iv heard of people upgrading or changing out motherboards in them before to get a different processor, but is it worth it? also I notice the macbook gets real warm to the touch now, someone told me to reapply the thermal gel, and itll help it, but is this something that someone can easily do on their own?
 

Raz0rEdge

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SSD will reduce your overall capacity, but get you a performance boost. A higher capacity HDD will just get you higher capacity with minimal performance boost depending on what you have right now..

If you are not using much space on your current HDD or you have an external drive for things, then keeping the OS and apps on the SSD means that they'll all load and run faster..

Replacing the logic boards is not a trivial thing, you need to a find the exact fit one and so on..it MIGHT be possible to find a logic board for a newer version (maybe one year newer or something) that is similar enough but can support a new/faster processor or has a faster graphics chip on it..

A lot of this depends on whether the logic board has the processor soldered on or is socketed. The GPU is usually soldered, so that can't be changed..

But this can get expensive quickly..

Based on your student budget..I'd start with the battery..look into getting a SSD as long as you have something to hold all of your large'ish video files and pictures so that you don't run out of space on your SSD and crash OS X..
 

pigoo3

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is there any way to easily and affordable upgrade the processor or graphics card in the macbooks, im asking this cause Iv heard of people upgrading or changing out motherboards in them before to get a different processor, but is it worth it?

cpu and graphics hardware are all soldering onto the logic board. No way to replace or upgrade them. Maybe some folks have done some logic board swapping...but it really is not cheap...and you have VERY few options (what logic boards will & won't fit).

also I notice the macbook gets real warm to the touch now, someone told me to reapply the thermal gel, and itll help it, but is this something that someone can easily do on their own?

All Apple laptops can exhibit this depending on what you are doing. It's also possible it could be dirty inside...so a cleaning/inspection may be worth a try.

- Nick
 

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