Mac Experiment

cerberuspuppy said:

Cost: Even with a student discount and buying referbed a 2 year old Mac can still be very expensive. Some are over $2000! Is there any way to address or mitigate that?

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Most definitely...buy used.

Most college students cannot afford a new car...so they buy a used car. Same logic works for computers.

- Nick

chscag said:

Yeah, it looks like they'll send you an unlock code via email so you can download it from the App Store.

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You were right Charlie. I received two e-mails today. One is a secure PDF document that contains a redemption code. The second e-mail contains the password to unlock the secure PDF.

I revceived the e-mails about 24 hours after making the purchase. Kind of strange that it should take 24 hours. Being all electronic...it should have been almost instantaneous...or at least only take a short time.

In the process of downloading at the moment. Now I have to find an 8gig USB stick to make the bootable thumb drive.

- Nick

Got the Macbook this morning. The first thing I noticed is that it's certainly the prettiest computer I've owned FWIW. The next thing I noticed is that the battery bleeds fast. In a couple hours it was down to a third. The HDD is 80 but the OS is actually 10.6.8 which is just fine by me.

The plug on the power cord is broken though- literally in pieces. I'm waiting for a response on that from the seller.

I got Mail basically set up and I like it well enough I'm just wondering if I can get it to automatically sort things for me. I'm on a lot of mailing lists and it gets to be a bit much at times, especially at the end of the month. I like that it displays on the dock if I have any unread but can I get that count to not include the bulk mailings?

It looks like the Macbook automatically (and very quickly) copied documents from my PC but not my music. I'll have to see what I can figure out when I get the power situated.

80 GB isn't much these days but I don't plan on putting movies, games or even many pictures on it and there are ways around that like I said. Are you sure it's really that easy to upgrade the RAM? I've never actually cracked open a laptop before let alone a Mac. I know a guy who knows a lot more about laptops than I do, PCs at least. Maybe I'll ask him.

Aren't you supposed to take the battery out of a laptop before shipping it?

What exact Macbook did you get? If it's a plain White Macbook Ram and the Hard drive is very easy. BAttery out, 3 small screws and flip a lever for each Ram Chip. Hard Drive you pull a tab and out it comes.

In the process of downloading at the moment. Now I have to find an 8gig USB stick to make the bootable thumb drive.

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Big Lots (discount store here in Fort Worth) is selling PNY SDHC 16 GB cards for $8.88. I've quit buying the thumb like flash drives and use the SDHC cards instead. The problem with using them is not every machine has a built in slot for SDHC cards whereas every machine has a USB port of some kind.

dtravis7 said:

What exact Macbook did you get? If it's a plain White Macbook Ram and the Hard drive is very easy. BAttery out, 3 small screws and flip a lever for each Ram Chip. Hard Drive you pull a tab and out it comes.

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There's a link to the product on Amazon in the first post. It is a plain white Macbook circa 2007.

Sounds like the one I use here. What I said above fits. If you need any more info ask and I can link you to a video or take apart showing how to install RAM or a drive.

Yep, same exact machine down to the DVD Combo drive.

The thing that really worries me about the HDD is getting all the files over. I'm not actually worried about the small HDD though, for reasons I've said and flash drives are about 50 cents a GB on Amazon now. I already have my doc files on a 2 GB one and I have a 16 that I haven't even opened. Granted that's slower, less convenient and takes up a USB slot, but I'll see if that will do.

If you ever do want to upgrade the drive, purchase a Cheap USB 2.5" SATA External case from Amazon. I got one for $8!!! Put in the 80GB in there and the new drive in the Macbook. Another way is get an external USB drive and use Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner and back up the machine. Then you can later put it all back on the new drive.

Carbon Copy Cloner makes a bootable backup. Time Machine you just boot from OSX install Media and from Utilities choose restore from Backup and point it to the Time Machine backup. I have done both many times and when I restore it's just like it was before I put in the new drive, just more room!

dtravis7 said:

Sounds like the one I use here. What I said above fits. If you need any more info ask and I can link you to a video or take apart showing how to install RAM or a drive.

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Okay. I will need to upgrade the RAM I think. Thanks.

The 2 places we recommend for RAM are Crucial and OWC. OWC guaranteys their ram to work in a Mac or they make it right. On OWC you can look up your model and see what options are available.

I should get the replacement part tomorrow. I hope so. I could really use the laptop Wednesday. I'll work with it more tomorrow evening assuming I do. I also got iWork 08 and I want to install it but I'm reluctant to start it with only 33% battery and no way to recharge.

It sounds to me like that battery is original to the machine and not capable of its full capacity anymore. You'll likely need to buy a new one ($100 or so) at some point, or leave it plugged in once you have a working plug.

Yeah I'm starting to wish I'd done more research and found something that needed less upgrading.

On the bright side, iWork installed much faster and more smoothly than I thought it would.

I upgraded my MacBook Pro (mid-2009) from 2GB to 4GB when I bought it on CraigsList a few years ago, it was a very good deal, due to a few scratches on the aluminum Unibody case. The seller signed a 48 hour warranty with a photocopy of his drivers licence. (I got burned on CraigsList once before... so I am more cautious now.) No problems, but now I need to upgrade from 4GB to 8GB because 6GB is recommended for running Windows and VMware Fusion... the 4GB was more than adequate for my needs, until now.

I bought an 8GB RAM kit (4GBx2) DDR3 PC3-8500 (1666 non-ECC) 204-pin SODIMM at Fry's Electronics locally, and it would not boot. Took it back, got another brand, and that would run for a few hours between crashes. So, I took that back and bought from Crucial online. The Fry's refund-warranty is only 15 days, and the warranty at crucial.com gives 45 days refund, with lifetime exchange warranty.

Be careful where you buy your RAM, anything less than 30 day return is unsatisfactory, imho. If it works for a few weeks without any problems, it will probably last for many years.

Next up: battery replacement, it only runs for half an hour now, but I rarely use it more than a few minutes when unplugged. The original battery is about four years old and near end of useful life.

Okay so how do I know which battery to get?

Just search for "MacBook MB061LL/A battery"

The one straight from Apple is $129

Perhaps some of our US members can suggest reputable third party replacements in the US

Well there is one on Amazon for $43 assuming it's compatible: Amazon.com: LB1 High Performance Battery for Apple A1185 Laptop Battery - 5000mAh 55wHr Notebook Computer 18 Months Warranty: Computers & Accessories

I'm just not sure if it's even worth it. The battery does drain fast but it's not really much worse than my old Dell laptop, and that clunker wouldn't even display properly unless it was plugged in. I'm not sure if I really want to shell out the cash for an extra hour maybe two.