These pre-unibody aluminums are a serious love and hate relationship for me. They had one of the best keyboard Apple ever shipped on a laptop bar none and looked very sexy and clean, but they ran unacceptably hot and the 2007-2008 models had the infamous Nvidia GPUs that were guaranteed to eventually fail. I would be wary of using this as any kind of permanent solution. I even gave up trying to restore my 15" 2006er, which even in that models the ATI graphics were failing.
Sternkrieger you know it was a huge problem when literally every time this laptop is brought up in conversation by somebody the Nvidia problems are usually what they talk about
I love these 17-inch models. I have an Early 2008 15-inch. Apart from having one logic board replacement and a few batteries, it's never let me down in the 11 years I've owned it.
She spent 2700 on a computer just to do basic tasks? My god man, that’s crazy... (I’m aware laptops in that time frame weren’t exactly cheap but still....)
@@bbishoppcm You were talking as if you did not know what this one was and the information should be printed in the description for the VIEWER not the video creator. People watching retro computer videos like to know exactly what is being worked on as they may have the same model and wish to upgrade it. And you were not giving enough information on it. My comment was also intended to help out the viewer not just you.
I've worked for Batteries Plus for many years now and I've seen batteries come in for recycling that you wouldn't believe. Every chemistry from Lithium, sealed lead and automotive and that by far is the worst laptop battery I've ever seen. She is lucky that it didn't catch on fire, explode or ruined the laptop.
VERY nice example of an early MBP. Just out of curiosity (and you may have mentioned why, I just didn't catch it), why not put an SSD to try to effectively "max" the performance?
I just recently worked on a 15" MBP of this era. I was told it has screen issues, and to my surprise it wasn't the GPU. All that was wrong was a worn out video cable, causing the screen to go off when opened past a certain point. It was worse for wear, including the bloating battery problem and the hard drive was failing.
I install an SSD but the macbook won't boot up in recovery mode by holding down command R.. I don't have the disk for this macbook pro.. what do you recommend
Worst Apple battery bulge I ever saw was in a Unibody 2010 MacBook. The battery was bulged so much it had pretty much pushed the trackpad almost out of it's fitting. Got that sucker out of there really damn quick!
For older Macs on Snow Leopard. Check out this web browser called Arctic Fox. It's a port of Firefox that is made in both 32bit and 64 bit versions and compatible with Snow Leopard. forums.macrumors.com/threads/arctic-fox-web-browser-for-10-6-32-64-bit.2133051/ This allows me to watch RU-vid live streams on older Macs without any issues.
That battery issue happened to me when I had a brand new 2007 17 inch they can be really dangerous. I remember fighting with apple to get a new battery. You may want to get rid of it quickly mine was still expanding even before I sent it back to apple it split open in the middle of the night woke us all up with a huge sound.
This generation of MacBook Pros also had a high rate of GPU failures. The GPUs used were junk. I have owned two of this 17 inch model and both had a GPU failure. 15 inch models weren't better either. And if I remember right also the batteries failed quite often, like this one has.
I miss all the 80s computers you use to have, you had some rad machines. (Please keep the Compaq) I don't ever save modern laptops as historocal devices, only as paratical machines. Apple are the kings of ripping custermers off. It is sad, they have only got worese since Steve died as well.
I also restored a 17" Macbook Pro. Mine is a 3,1 with the 1920x1200 screen and the 2.6GHz cpu. I found a new old stock Apple battery for it since the cheap ebay ones have plastic cases. I also put 6gb RAM and a 480gb ssd in it to make it more useable. Its slow but runs El Capitan and is still useful today even for youtube (720p or less). It sits unused in the original box anymore however since the 8600M gpus in these are time bombs.
The original 8600M GT GPU chipset had a manufacturing defect when it was first released. Later on, however, nVidia released a new version of the chipset that doesn't have the issues the original did, and therefore never fails. I have a couple videos on my channel about what to look for to identify which chipset you have, as well as replacing a defective chipset with a new, revised chipset.
To be fair, your iMac 24" had a 3.5" drive. Laptop 2.5" drives tended to be around 250GB as standard in 2006-2008. The 2008 model was on it's way out, if you bought it in 08 you probably were kicking yourself later that year. Just snagged a clean example for $60 on eBay with no battery. Hopefully it runs! Love the design of these classis.
As much as I dislike how these were built, I really do have a soft spot for the non-unibody MBPs, especially the keyboards. Those things are an absolute joy to type on. I actually looked forward to writing school papers on mine when I had one back in '07! I don't exactly hate the chiclet boards that replaced it, but I don't love them either.
My g4” PowerBook still has its original 2003 battery, and it gets around 3 hours still! The case is separating on the lid but other than that it’s in alright shape. The hard drive and low ram kill any performance on it.
I found one 9 months ago. I ended up putting in SSD, newer WIFI card and installing 10.12 with the patcher and it's running 6 GB of RAM. The computer was given to an older family member. He uses it every day. The one I found had the battery the same, but a new box of an original never used Apple battery.
Honestly, I myself find that machine much more attractive than current macs. And it's *actually* aluminum, rather than the aluminum being a skin deep facade for cheap plastic. Jobs may have been an anal retentive nut, but that's partly why the computers were so well built. He made sure of it.
The reason it only had 160gb is because its a 2007 model lol i mean granted they charged fuck tons of cash for a 17 inch but the 2008 17" had (at the lowest spec) a 2.5 ghz c2d and a 250-320gb hard drive. idk about hard drive prices back in 08 but yk you gotta give them props for making such a sturdy ass machine. I have 4 17 inch pre unibody macbook pros which all have their drawbacks (depending on the year). I mean over all (not counting the numerous issues they had) are decent machines and pretty cheap these days.
Yeah, I forgot how stingy Apple was with hard drives in 2007 - I should know, I ordered about 200 MacBooks between 2006 and 2008, all of which had 80GB drives.
Dude, I'm watching this from a 2008 17 inch Macbook Pro. It has 6 GB ram and an SSD, so it screams, but it also doesn't have even a scratch. It's immaculate.You're not any where near top of the list bro.
i have three computers that are very lucky to have survived the test of time and i would never sell any of them My Asus 10.1 inch with its Orignal Asus battery still working and my 17 inch hp pavilion and my Gateway Desktop
