I love unibody MacBook Pros, my take on $40 dollars MacBook Pro

[Wowfunhappy]

The key is you have needed to have "purchased" the Microsoft app during the period when you need the older download.

No you don't. I've used this trick with lots of apps where my account did not meet that criteria. Including OneDrive, which I'd never used before 2020.

Are you absolutely 100% positive that your wife was downloading from the purchased screen and not somewhere else in the app store? The trick only works from the purchased screen specifically.

If so, it's possible that Excel was pulled from the app store at some point and re-listed later. That would turn the current version of Excel into a different product as far as the store is concerned, so there'd be no older version to offer.

However, this older version of OneDrive doesn't have the "Files On Demand" feature.

When I needed OneDrive for work, I solved this problem by buying a ludicrously large SSD. 😉

(I'm on a desktop though, it's a bit harder on a laptop!)

 

[BeatCrazy]

Are you absolutely 100% positive that your wife was downloading from the purchased screen and not somewhere else in the app store? The trick only works from the purchased screen specifically.

Yep, you called it. Thinking about it more carefully, she was trying to download from the standard "store" page, not purchase history page (to be fair to her, I didn't know/tell her to do it any differently).

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I have 3 unibody macbooks and also am a fan. The late 2008 13" I am typing this on I bought back in 2009 as used for $500 and serves as a daily driver ATM (I figure 13 years consistent use is a pretty good value). To date, I have upgraded it to 8gb ram, replaced the battery, replaced the keyboard with a backlit kb and upgraded the spinner to a SSD, so its as decked out as it's gonna get. It hangs out in my den and gets daily morning before work and afternoon after work use. I have a couple of these actually (2nd is a functioning parts backup, came with the 8gb upgrade from my local recycler and was $40 ) and a 2009 MBP which I was given for free from the IT coordinator at my old workplace. All have been great when tasked with normy DD stuff. My browser of choice is Opera v86.0.4 and I still run El Cap. That combined with updating the certs and you've got a great little machine for day to day, normal tasks. Thanks for the writeup.

*edited for spelling:

Also, considering these macbooks age, I need to pull it apart and repaste/replace thermal pads but yanno - life. I figure Ill eventually get around to it.

 

[Aoligei]

UPDATE...

I got a lucky yesterday where my co-worker gave me a 15 inch 2009 MacBook for free, since the hard drive is pretty much dead and he doesn't know how to reload MacOS. He said he hasn't been use machine for over a year and half. He gave me this laptop because we had very good working relationship and he know I love these kind of staff.

So I have fixed it up, upgraded to 8GB RAM, put a 250GB SSD and 2TB HDD on this. I ended up paid him about $100 dollars for it, because I think he deserve some money for this. I think this is the top end MacBook Pro where it has 2.8GB Intel Core 2 Duo T9600, Nvidia 9400M and Nvidia 9600GT 512MB. So pretty much I got a maxed out 09 15" MacBook Pro for about $100 where this is normally sold for over $300.

I got have to say 15" screen is much nicer to view. Bigger screen does give you better computing experience. Although the resolution is still kind terrible, but it is better than 1280x800 found on 13" model.

However, this MacBook Pro runs significantly hotter than 13". When I type on this machine, my whist can feel the warmth. CPU is around 82C to 90C while just have few tabs open with Brave processor. I haven't stress test this machine, but I don't think this machine is really capable to do anything intensive at this stage. I am not complaining about spending $100 dollars on a 15" laptop that can do most of Internet things, movie watching, some office editing. This is a good alternative to something like Chromebook.

UPDATE:

Brought a new battery for this particular machine, wow, what is the difference. Old battery will only last 3 minutes before it shuts down. Now the new battery installed, only with 4% of charge left 13 minutes now, still @ 4%...

 

[theMarble]

So pretty much I got a maxed out 09 15" MacBook Pro

There was a 3.06GHz BTO model on the 2009 15" however $100 for a 2.8, 8GB and dual drives is a steal!

 

[Amethyst1]

However, this MacBook Pro runs significantly hotter than 13".

Did you replace the thermal paste on the CPU and GPU? With that being said, the T-series CPUs have a higher TDP than the P-series in the 13".

 

[dandeco]

Those unibody MacBook Pros were great machines. I often use a mid-2012 15" quad-core i7 model, upgraded with a new battery, 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD, configured as a dual-boot system with Mac OS 12 Monterey (patched, of course) and Windows 10 via Boot Camp. With that said, I especially love the easy user serviceability of these unibody Pros...

Just unscrew and remove the bottom panel to reveal this nice modular layout.

 

[Aoligei]

Those unibody MacBook Pros were great machines. I often use a mid-2012 15" quad-core i7 model, upgraded with a new battery, 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD, configured as a dual-boot system with Mac OS 12 Monterey (patched, of course) and Windows 10 via Boot Camp. With that said, I especially love the easy user serviceability of these unibody Pros...
View attachment 2025181
Just unscrew and remove the bottom panel to reveal this nice modular layout.

How is your experience on removing keyboard ribbon (cable)... i have hard time to remove it, so I was putting off changing thermal paste, which I should do..

This machine runs quite hot, TBH. And when dual fans kick in, it can be quite loud. The only other laptop as hot and as noisy as this one is my AMD based Ryzen 3 HP laptop (this laptop for some reason, fan is always in loud).

I also have mid-2014 Retina MacBook Pro and 2020 MacBook Air, all of them are significantly quieter. I have been putting off purchasing Apple Silicon laptops, since all my mac laptops are working well.

 

[Aoligei]

There was a 3.06GHz BTO model on the 2009 15" however $100 for a 2.8, 8GB and dual drives is a steal!

Battery is kind dead anyway. It won't last more than 3 minutes...lol.. I am looking at Amazon for replacement battery, but I don't think i will ever use this without power anyway, so I don't want invest more mooney for this..

 

[m1maverick]

Battery is kind dead anyway. It won't last more than 3 minutes...lol.. I am looking at Amazon for replacement battery, but I don't think i will ever use this without power anyway, so I don't want invest more mooney for this..

Some laptops require a battery in order to operate at full speed. Without a battery it may clock down.

 

[Amethyst1]

Some laptops require a battery in order to operate at full speed. Without a battery it may clock down.

AFAIK all Intel MacBooks downclock (to 1 GHz in case of Core 2 Duo models).

 

[Aoligei]

Some laptops require a battery in order to operate at full speed. Without a battery it may clock down.

Is there a way to tell if the CPU is clocking down?

UPDATE: I double checked using terminal command, it seems the CPU is operating in full CPU speed.

UPDATE 2: I checked on Amazon, I have found a replacement battery on sales. With a gift card, I brought for $25.

This is what reported with system information. Looks like the system is able to detect the battery, but it seems the full charging capacity is very strange. I believe the 15" MacBook Pro ship with 7080mAh, but this is like 9x more than suppose to be..

 

[Amethyst1]

Is there a way to tell if the CPU is clocking down?

Run Geekbench and check if the results are as high as expected.

 

[Jack Neill]

Dell Latitude E7470

If you know your way around Open Core, this guy can pretend to be a Mac. Mine is E7270 on 10.14 although I ran 11.x on it for quite a while. I did swap the wifi for a Broadcom.

GitHub - macOS-Dell-Latitude-E7470/macOS-Dell-Latitude-E7470: EFI for installing macOS Catalina and Big Sur on Dell Latitude E7470 using OpenCore

EFI for installing macOS Catalina and Big Sur on Dell Latitude E7470 using OpenCore - macOS-Dell-Latitude-E7470/macOS-Dell-Latitude-E7470

github.com

 

[m1maverick]

If you know your way around Open Core, this guy can pretend to be a Mac. Mine is E7270 on 10.14 although I ran 11.x on it for quite a while. I did swap the wifi for a Broadcom.

GitHub - macOS-Dell-Latitude-E7470/macOS-Dell-Latitude-E7470: EFI for installing macOS Catalina and Big Sur on Dell Latitude E7470 using OpenCore

EFI for installing macOS Catalina and Big Sur on Dell Latitude E7470 using OpenCore - macOS-Dell-Latitude-E7470/macOS-Dell-Latitude-E7470

github.com

Thank you for this information. I've read a lot of posts mentioning OpenCore but I haven't looked into it. As for running macOS on non Macintosh systems I'm really not interested in doing so as I have many Macs with the most recent being the Studio Ultra.

 

[Jack Neill]

Thank you for this information. I've read a lot of posts mentioning OpenCore but I haven't looked into it. As for running macOS on non Macintosh systems I'm really not interested in doing so as I have many Macs with the most recent being the Studio Ultra.

It can be fun and rewarding and it can be incredibly frustrating and time consuming. Its like being married..

 

[bunnspecial]

“Ancient” FireWire 800 is substantially faster than USB 2.0.

I realize this thread has taken a different turn , but just wanted to comment too that, as I'm sure you know, in the real world even "lowly" Firewire 400 often can outperform USB 2.0 at data transfer despite its lower on paper speed.

It's a shame Firewire really never caught on outside Apple and at that really even only a few niche applications. I was afraid Thunderbolt was headed the same direction, but it seems popular enough now that maybe not. Outside of cost of implementation(which I know isn't significant), I'm hard pressed to think of ways that USB 2.0 is a better protocol than Firewire for things like data transfer. It's a great interface for input peripherals(where Apple would have used ADB in the past) but Firewire transfers data with less hardware overhead(so faster sustained read/write) and less latency.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

How is your experience on removing keyboard ribbon (cable)... i have hard time to remove it, so I was putting off changing thermal paste, which I should do..

This does remind me that the LVDS cable port on the earlier 2008 can be problematic. Take care when removing. While replacing the KB on mine, I recall the brass bit being extremely delicate and partially lifting from the lobo. I repaired it and all is well (again using that a1278 to type this) but recall that issue. Also the microphone cable is easy to not get connected properly lol ... then you wonder why your internal mic stops working lol

... not that that ever happened to me.

 

[rampancy]

Somewhat on topic, I am absolutely terrified of the unibody MacBook Pros. I see a fair bit of tempting deals on my local used goods website (Kijiji) for 13" and 15" machines, but it seems like if unibody MBPs aren't suffering from catastrophic failures of the dedicated GPU, they're suffering from brittle LVDS or hard drive cables. My main fear is investing the time, money, and energy into upgrading and cleaning one up only to see it die horribly months later...

I think there was a post which detailed which of the 13"/15" models are problematic/ticking time bombs and which ones are relatively safe, but for the life of me I can't find it.

 

[Amethyst1]

I think there was a post which detailed which of the 13"/15" models are problematic/ticking time bombs and which ones are relatively safe, but for the life of me I can't find it.

Somewhere in here?

 

[f54da]

Somewhat on topic, I am absolutely terrified of the unibody MacBook Pros. I see a fair bit of tempting deals on my local used goods website (Kijiji) for 13" and 15" machines, but it seems like if unibody MBPs aren't suffering from catastrophic failures of the dedicated GPU, they're suffering from brittle LVDS or hard drive cables. My main fear is investing the time, money, and energy into upgrading and cleaning one up only to see it die horribly months later...

I think there was a post which detailed which of the 13"/15" models are problematic/ticking time bombs and which ones are relatively safe, but for the life of me I can't find it.

The 2010s have the lvds and gpu capacitor issue, and the 2011s are well known. But in general those put out so much heat that you can probably consider most unibodies are a ticking time bond anyway.

Also yes without battery the laptops will throttle themselves due to bd_prochot asserted. You can disable this pretty easily, although I don't really know if doing so also disables the safety if the temps genuinely do exceed tjunc.

One good thing is that's they're easy to work on though. My ideal dream would be 2013 or 2014 rmbp with removable battery and less soldered-on everything.

 

[theMarble]

The 2010s have the lvds and gpu capacitor issue, and the 2011s are well known. But in general those put out so much heat that you can probably consider most unibodies are a ticking time bond anyway.

Also yes without battery the laptops will throttle themselves due to bd_prochot asserted. You can disable this pretty easily, although I don't really know if doing so also disables the safety if the temps genuinely do exceed tjunc.

One good thing is that's they're easy to work on though. My ideal dream would be 2013 or 2014 rmbp with removable battery and less soldered-on everything.

The Late 2008/Early 2009 15" and 17" didn't suffer from any issues, nor did the Mid 2009's I think. The 2012 unibody was also amazing (Ivy Bridge, Kepler on the 15", USB 3).

 

[MultiFinder17]

My late 2008 15" has been amazingly solid being used all day every day in my classroom. I do keep it in better battery mode so that it's always using the 9400M which may help, and even if it doesn't it certainly makes me feel better.

 

[theMarble]

My late 2008 15" has been amazingly solid being used all day every day in my classroom. I do keep it in better battery mode so that it's always using the 9400M which may help, and even if it doesn't it certainly makes me feel better.

That's the one with the ExpressCard slot, isn't it?

 

[Amethyst1]

That's the one with the ExpressCard slot, isn't it?

Yep.