Who else is a happy owner of a 2007/2008 MacBook Pro? Did you upgrade it?

[AnnaQBNM]

I have a MacBook Pro that will be 9 years old september/2016 (it left factory in september/2007). It still works fine.

A week ago, I have performed a clean installation of OS 10.11.2.
No problem at all - at least using Adobe CC Illustrator and Photoshop, Wacom tablet, OpenOffice and some other few apps (one at a time!).

However, I wish it could work faster and some people has told me I could make it a 4GB RAM and SSD machine. Some other people think I should not invest in it at all, since it would be way beyond its "life cycle". But, well, my Yoda Mac works just fine and I wonder how many of you still happily use an old machine like mine. Actually, did anyone upgrade recently a late-2007 MBP?

 

[jaguarMac]

I use a late 2008 Macbook Pro with SSD and 8G memory and am happy with it. It has Yosemite on it.
It has these helpful programs on it: smcFanControl, Dr. Cleaner, Boom 2, Onyx, cDock

 

[Slydude]

I have a MacBook Pro of that vintage. Until about mid-November it was my primary machine. I replaced the hard drive with an SSD and bumped the memory from 4 GB to 8 GB. Did that a while back and it made a noticeable difference. If you can find good deals on the parts it will breathe a bit more life into that machine.

Before you make the changes though let me ask what you are primarily using the computer for? On many tasks I didn't notice huge slowdowns but for some tasks the difference is noticeable. For example, in general web surfing and MS Word that computer works fine. Try performing tasks on large video files and thats another matter. Converting a 12 GB .mts file took over 11 hours on that machine. On my 2015 iMac with 8 GB of ram the same conversion takes less than 2 hours.

That machine runs El Capitan but I'm not really sure it will fun future versions.

 

[harryb2448]

As slydude suggests an SSD and 6GB of memory would improve things greatly.

Onyx is a great program, ignore the others. Not required by modern operating systems.

 

[jaguarMac]

don't ignore the other programs I listed. each one is very helpful for what it does.

 

[chscag]

I would advise everyone to avoid SmcFanControl and Dr. Cleaner along with all other cleaners and fan control programs. Neither one is helpful.

 

[chas_m]

I second the post above: both are junkware.

For someone still holding on to a machine of that vintage, I'd say both maxing out the RAM and switching to SSD storage will make the biggest difference in performance. It's amazing that El Capitan even supports machines over five years old (not really in character for Apple!), but with SSD and lots of RAM it can hum along and handle much (other than high-intensity graphics stuff) of what one can throw at it in 2016. There are bottlenecks in machines that old but depending on your specific use, they may not be big issues for you yet.

 

[jaguarMac]

my Mac was getting too hot since it is not in an air conditioned room. Using a fan control program brought the temperature down. highly recommended.

right now Dr Cleaner showed that I was using 98% of memory so I clicked on "optimize" and it brought it down to 64%. what's wrong with that? only bad things happen when you use up all the memory.

 

[chas_m]

Dr Cleaner is snake oil that is not doing anything. Do you really seriously believe that Apple FORGOT to manage RAM when users use the computer?? Seriously??

Of course, you're also apparently under the impression that Apple "forgot" to turn on the fans when its hot, so maybe you do believe twaddle like that.

OR MAYBE ... Apple has the finest computer engineers in the world, and actually know what temperature is good for the Mac better than you do, and how best to control it. NAH, COULDN'T BE.

 

[AnnaQBNM]

Thanks for sharing so much information!
Those of you who did upgrade that vintage, could you tell the brands of the memories and the SSD? Or, at least, could name any brand I should not trust at all?
I'm not really familiar with any apps for system performance, the only one I ever tried (and just recently!) is called Clean My Mac 3. Do you know that?

Slydude, the only apps I need are ACC Illustrator and Photoshop and the standard files I work with are not heavy at all (vectorial art). I use Photoshop for hi-res photos, but not even raw. Other apps are Apache OpenOffice, Wacom driver and few other.

Yesterday I found out that turning off Dictation gave me back a huge amount of RAM so my tiny 2GB are actually almost smiling, but yes, I'm gonna go for the 4GB (people told me that this 3.1 generation will only take 4GB, 2 x 2GB) and the famous SSD. Right now, I'm researching brands.

 

[bobtomay]

As stated above, get rid of Clean My Mac.
There is only one "cleaner" recommended by all the long time members here and that is Onyx which is free and available here.
Make sure you get the one for your version of OS X.

Those "people" are simply incorrect.
Your MBP 3,1 can use 6 GB of RAM with a 2 & 4 GB stick.
Apple only tested it with up to 4 GB when it came out.
You can verify that by looking up your Mac at everymac.com or by using the mactracker app.

If you're not sure where to buy, just head to OWC.
Mac specialists and prices that aren't gouging you just because you own a Mac.
Great customer service in my experience also.

 

[jaguarMac]

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/cleaner-great-app-speed-your-mac.html
the memory optimizer of Dr Cleaner:
1) Purges unused memory and makes it available to your Mac’s processor
2) Frees up unnecessary memory used by recent files that you are done with
3) Gives you an easy memory monitoring app to analyze your Mac’s memory usage

While advanced Mac users who run routine maintenance on their Mac’s will not find Dr. Cleaner doing anything revolutionary, amateur Mac owners will definitely benefit from giving it a quick run. Dr. Cleaner can be particularly useful for those who do not have any idea about how to delete junk like cache files, system files, log files and binary junk off their Mac.

Dr. Cleaner, available for a free download at iTunes, is only designed to delete files that will not affect your OS’s native functioning. It will also not delete your personal data automatically. As for memory cleanup, the program is intuitive enough to only free up that memory that you don’t use anymore.

For instance, when you finish watching a movie and close the movie app on your Mac, remnants of that program will still continue to use your Mac’s memory for a period of time. Dr. Cleaner will free up such redundantly used memory.

On iTunes, Dr. Cleaner has over 1,000 ratings, with an average of 4.5 stars out of five, which is very impressive. Mac users from around the world have lauded it for its simplicity and efficiency, often citing that it is a quick one step solution for speeding up a Mac that might have slowed down unusually.

 

[chas_m]

So you're telling me if I write a program that puts up a fancy animation of a gas gauge going from 0 to 100 and, when it reaches that after say 30 seconds, puts up a banner that says "YOU DID IT!" I could charge suckers money for this and make some nice income? Because that is essentially what snake-oil "RAM optimizers" do. Instead of allowing OS X to manage memory normally, they run terminal commands that convert "standby" RAM (which will actually let recently-used programs launch quicker) into "free" RAM so that the "free" RAM number looks bigger, which gives comfort to people who have no understanding of how RAM works.

One born every minute ...

 

[jaguarMac]

well, for one, Dr Cleaner is a free download so they have no motivation to sucker people.
look, you are entitled to your personal preferences just as I am.

 

[chas_m]

Facts ≠ personal preferences. You want a fake program to make you feel better, go right ahead. That doesn't change the fact that it does absolutely nothing of any value whatsoever. That's the great thing about facts -- they're true whether you believe in them or not.