Macbook 4,2 or 5.1?

[Nefos]

Hi guys

I have quite bit of experience in Windows based systems but never had a Macbook/iMac before and I thought it is time

I would like to buy a cheap Macbook around £150, even if its broken I can fix it, and use it as note taking laptop/youtube/recipe laptop
There are 2 models that are fitting in my price range and availability
Macbook 2008 4,2 Black, 2.3Ghz 2GB DDR2 Ram( I will upgrade it to 4GB or 6GB),x3100 gpu and screen discolourization. I have read that it is just the matter of reseating the monitor cable
This is £150
second is a Macbook 2008 unibody, so 2.0 GHz, 2 GB ddr3 RAM, 9400m GPU and no problems, although it is £200.

I would leaning more towards the 4,2, as it is cheaper and I just want to try the Mac out, although I am a bit worried about the GPU. is it good enough for general usage?
Which one should I choose?
Have you heard something about the repairibility of the display?

 

[pigoo3]

Get the MacBook 5,1 because it can be upgraded to the most recent Mac OS version (if desired at some point). The MacBook 4,1 can only run up to OS 10.7.5 (which is 4 OS versions behind the most recent).

- Nick

 

[lclev]

+1 to what Nick said.

Get the Macbook unibody - 5,1. There is more you can do with it - upgrading OS X, accepts 8GB of memory versus 6.0 for the 4,1. Also the extra cost might be offset by the cost of a new cable or possibly screen for the 4,1.

Check out ifixit.com for how to's for repairs and upgrading.

Lisa

 

[Quinten]

I don't know where you live but here the prices of the macbook 5.1 are very comparable to those of the macbook 7,1 Unibody white, If you can find a 7,1 for around 200 it would give you a better cpu and a better gpu (9400m Vs 320m)

 

[chas_m]

Unless your time is worthless, the extra £50 for the functional one is obviously -- for the reasons mentioned above -- a better deal.

I must warn you: you will very quickly find yourself wanting a newer one, because you will enjoy the older one until you run into the natural limitations of the age of that machine.

 

[Nefos]

okay thanks!
Now make things more interesting:
as it turned out the Mac 5,1 needs new battery, so that is £30 more and a charger, £20
I found a Mac Pro, 2008 15" 2.8GHz 4GB RAM nearby
unibody, £300, 15" new battery
And then there is the Macbook 7,1 (thanks @Quinten !)

GT320m, still core 2 duo but I am okay with that, and they are plastic, and I would like a metal one. although if they are much better than the 2008 model( although I have read that the GT320m GT9600 in Mac Pro 2008)


and yes, they are cheaper, but whereas the listing I have given here were from local advertisements in Leeds, as I would prefer local pickup
Does it worth to spend £50 for the Mac Pro?
Or should I get the £200+50 Macbook 5.1?

If I have stupid or obvious questions I am sorry, I have no idea about OSX and what resources it needs, also in laptops in general, although I do not the differences in components by themselves
On a side note, I have been told that at Uni we will use macs for programming (lightweight) next year, so I would need something that can last a year or two (preferably)

 

[Quinten]

The Macbook pro is a better choice ( Not mac pro thats a different system ) Since the 15inch macbook from 2008 has the 9400 and the gt 9600. The macbook pro with 4 Gb ram is for sure the best choice here if you want to go with a alluminium one. If not the macbook 7,1 is a nice choice is my school laptop as well ( Thats why im such a fan of it )

 

[Nefos]

Good news:
I am a proud owner of a Macbook Pro 5,1 15" 2.8Ghz and it was a bargain!
Bad news: it does not boot. Turns on, DVD (I think) makes sound, then there is the apple logo and the loading bar
The laptop allegedly worked and was on sleep...
Now I wait until the bar loads, it is really slow, but I think it will get an SSD upgrade, as I reckon it might be an HDD problem.
I will run an HDD check on it

 

[Quinten]

Lets hope it is a hard drive problem in that case. Better not be the gpu, you don't have any wierd things on the screen while booting? Also i don't think you got them but if you have the original grey colered disks you can run an apple hardware test. Best of luck!

 

[Nefos]

hmm interesting
after 10 minutes waiting it boots up but reeally slow
I think tomorrow I am going to pick up an SSD, after I am downloading el capitan today (if I can) so I can reinstall tomorrow
Question: Am I seeing it wrong but do I need another mac to sort my mac out in a sense of downloading an OS and prepare a new SSD?

 

[Quinten]

You can download it on this mac and make a bootable usb drive. Or is this computer not in working condition at all?

 

[Nefos]

You can download it on this mac and make a bootable usb drive. Or is this computer not in working condition at all?

Nope when it starts it turns to the Apple logo and the loading bar after a while, then it stuck halfway through
and last time it actually booted, and it does not even tho that this time around...
Ill ask a friend with a Mac tomorrow and get an SSD and sort this out.
Just to make sure:
Download El Cap, make a bootable SSD, prepare SSD on Mac, Plug SSD into Laptop then USB drive, then it will ask me to install El cap

Done some research and yeah, the OS partition died

On a side note:
I am going to use this Macbook Pro for light usage= youtube, surfing note taking, so nothing major. How much space do the OS need?
I have seen that the installer is 6GB and it takes up 8GB on the drive. If that is true an 120GB SSD would be enough for me

 

[pigoo3]

Good news:
I am a proud owner of a Macbook Pro 5,1 15" 2.8Ghz and it was a bargain!

Congrats. Since you mentioned it was a bargain…can we ask what you paid? Did you pay the asking price…or negotiated a bit?

Bad news: it does not boot. Turns on, DVD (I think) makes sound, then there is the apple logo and the loading bar
The laptop allegedly worked and was on sleep…

Did you throughly test the computer before purchasing? With laptops this is very very easy. And should always be done before handing over the cash.

Now I wait until the bar loads, it is really slow, but I think it will get an SSD upgrade, as I reckon it might be an HDD problem.
I will run an HDD check on it

Let's hope it's just a bad hard drive. Which a new HD or SSD will fix.

- Nick

 

[Quinten]

120gb should be sufficient. I got an 512gb ssd and only use 40gb. But i don't know if this will be the same for you. You cant really go wrong with an 200-250gb SSD. As for the os, when you stick the drive in and boot for the first time you need to hold down "alt" en select the usb drive to boot from. Then you need to format your ssd to mac osx journaled and you a ready to go. Hope youll enjoy your mac

 

[Nefos]

Congrats. Since you mentioned it was a bargain…can we ask what you paid? Did you pay the asking price…or negotiated a bit?



Did you throughly test the computer before purchasing? With laptops this is very very easy. And should always be done before handing over the cash.



Let's hope it's just a bad hard drive. Which a new HD or SSD will fix.

- Nick

it was advertised for £300 locally, and I bought it for £240
They tend to go for £300 or more on ebay (2.8 GHz late 2008)

I have, that was the moment when it was not booting up and I negotiated a 120GB SSD price in there

It is indeed, went to single user, and first it loaded a lot then crashed second time the kernel died.
I tried the recovery boot, command R, and froze at a menu, windows working the pointer worked but it just not responded

Quick question: It booted and it seems to work well now, so I quickly download El Capitan and create a USB Boot drive
Does it happen with OSX sometimes that the OSX launcher gets corrupted after sleep? it works as expected now and it is downloading El Cap now

Quinten (Sorry I am new to this forum format, tried multi quote did not succeded yet)
Okay that is some geat news, I will get a 120GB SSD then

 

[pigoo3]

it was advertised for £300 locally, and I bought it for £240
They tend to go for £300 or more on ebay (2.8 GHz late 2008)

Very nice. Always nice to get stuff for less than advertised.

Quick question: It booted and it seems to work well now, so I quickly download El Capitan and create a USB Boot drive
Does it happen with OSX sometimes that the OSX launcher gets corrupted after sleep? it works as expected now and it is downloading El Cap now.

Whenever I purchase a "new to me" (used computer)…one of the first things I do is erase the hard drive…and do a fresh install of the OS. This way any possible "junk" (or problems) from the previous owner are eliminated. And if there are any remaining problems…then they should be hardware related.

So if this computer was experiencing some problems…and things are fine now…hopefully a fresh (or the fresh) OS install will take care of things.

- Nick

 

[Nefos]

Unless your time is worthless, the extra £50 for the functional one is obviously -- for the reasons mentioned above -- a better deal.

I must warn you: you will very quickly find yourself wanting a newer one, because you will enjoy the older one until you run into the natural limitations of the age of that machine.

Very nice. Always nice to get stuff for less than advertised.



Whenever I purchase a "new to me" (used computer)…one of the first things I do is erase the hard drive…and do a fresh install of the OS. This way any possible "junk" (or problems) from the previous owner are eliminated. And if there are any remaining problems…then they should be hardware related.

So if this computer was experiencing some problems…and things are fine now…hopefully a fresh (or the fresh) OS install will take care of things.

- Nick

I will do the same
Good news: it is booting up ,but takes like 2 hrs for the system to actually turn on
Why is it good news: I am creating a bootable USB drive with DiskMaker X with El Cap, then I will reinstall everything

Notes: OSX is weird coming from Win, but I like it a lot!
I think I am going to use this laptop a lot after I sorted the OS out

 

[Quinten]

Great! let us know if your laptop is done im very curious

 

[Nefos]

Great! let us know if your laptop is done im very curious

Well, El Cap Downloaded and I have created an USB boot drive with Diskmaker X newest el cap compatible version with no problem
The only problem I have is that I cannot boot the MBP from the pendrive because it does not see it as a bootable device
I tried to "bless" the pendrive on an other mac, but I could not make it work, as it had problem with directories that I have copy and pasted and now my MBP still does not boot in to the original OS....
The files are there and ready, it shows up as an el cap installer disk...

any idea? I am browsing the forum but I found nothing yet.

 

[Quinten]

Is this still on the old hard drive? This hard drive may have had it best time. If not i really don't know what the problem is here
Best of luck!