Old Mac Book overhaul.

[skyscrapedr]

Hey guys, my wife has a Macbook that she bought around 2006 which runs OS X. The battery has died and the internal specs are quite outdated. Does anyone know if it is possible basically gut the laptop and get some modern hard and software. Or is it cheaper to just look for a new laptop, new Macs clearly don't come cheap.
Thanks for any advice.
Cheers, Luke

 

[DMGrier]

I would pick up a new battery, HDD and ram along with installing the latest version of OSX. For all I am assuming $250-300.

 

[voyagerfan99]

I would pick up a new battery, HDD and ram along with installing the latest version of OSX. For all I am assuming $250-300.

I wouldn't stick a new copy of OSX on there. Newest he could go is probably Tiger because from (I think it started with Leopard) Macs started running on Intel chips instead of Power-PC.

 

[wolfeking]

Is it possible to do what your asking, yes. To upgrade the processor though, you will need a new motherboard, as Apple in their dang wisdom soldered them down to the socket. Same with the GPU. I would check around and see if the 2006 macbook was the same as the newer ones up to 2011. That way you could get a C2D version with DDR3 (much cheaper than DDR2) and a GT330m GPU (newest version that the macbook offered).

It would of coarse be more cost efficient to get a newer laptop to use. That would however, limit you to PCs.

 

[wolfeking]

I wouldn't stick a new copy of OSX on there. Newest he could go is probably Tiger because from (I think it started with Leopard) Macs started running on Intel chips instead of Power-PC.

The 2006 versions were C2D.

All Macbooks are intel. the PPC were Powerbooks and ibooks.

 

[DMGrier]

I wouldn't stick a new copy of OSX on there. Newest he could go is probably Tiger because from (I think it started with Leopard) Macs started running on Intel chips instead of Power-PC.

It depends on his maximum amount of ram, he has the intel cpu and then he needs 2 GB of memory and he could run Lion. Now maybe he should stick with snow leopard cause I have read a lot of articles of Apple users saying that Lion feels sluggish compared to snow leopard with only 2 GB. Just what I hear though.

 

[speedyink]

It depends on his maximum amount of ram, he has the intel cpu and then he needs 2 GB of memory and he could run Lion. Now maybe he should stick with snow leopard cause I have read a lot of articles of Apple users saying that Lion feels sluggish compared to snow leopard with only 2 GB. Just what I hear though.

You're right, I upgraded my macbook to 2gigs to run Lion and it definitely feels more sluggish than Snow Leopard.

I wouldn't stick a new copy of OSX on there. Newest he could go is probably Tiger because from (I think it started with Leopard) Macs started running on Intel chips instead of Power-PC.

Newest you can run on a PPC is Leopard. Running it on my old G4 actually

 

[DMGrier]

You're right, I upgraded my macbook to 2gigs to run Lion and it definitely feels more sluggish than Snow Leopard.

Yeah that is what I have read, I heard that it is reliable and the U/I is nice but performance is kind of on the slow side. I just cannot believe apple is requiring 2 GB of memory now.

 

[speedyink]

Yeah that is what I have read, I heard that it is reliable and the U/I is nice but performance is kind of on the slow side. I just cannot believe apple is requiring 2 GB of memory now.

The UI is nice, there's some really nice additions like resizing windows from all sides (finally!) and a full screen mode, which while not perfect it's at least there.

But yes, it can be slow sometimes, and it winds up the cpu fan more often. It's also done some strange things that I've only seen on iPhones previously. Like Yesterday I played a song in iTunes, no big deal, click on the .mp3 file, iTunes opens up and plays, fine. Then I change my mind and go to play a different song, nothing. Ok, so I try again, spinning pinwheel. Try opening a different song, nothing. Click file menu, spinning pinwheel. After about a minute or two everything I did starts happening in order; open song, open same song again, open new song, file dropdown opens.

 

[DMGrier]

In no way I am saying Lion is as bad as vista but for the OSX this has to be the Vista of OSX for you guys.