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bobesch

macrumors 68020
Oct 21, 2015
2,142
2,220
Kiel, Germany
I also order new battery for couple unibody MacBook Pros, even with new battery, battery life is kind poor compare with modern more efficient MacBook Pros, especially one with Apple Silicons. I can get 3-4 hours of usage if I am only doing web browsing, office tasks. Any media streaming will kill battery in less than 2 hours.
At least the battery keeps the Macbook alive while moving from desk to couch.
To be honest, I can have 24h mobility with my early Intels ... 💪💪💪
mobility.JPG
:D
 

Certificate of Excellence

macrumors 6502a
Feb 9, 2021
945
1,458
YET OTHER UPDATE:

I am sorry for so many updates as I am experiencing these wonderful machines. I had little comparison between these old MacBook Pro and newer MacBook Pro.

I love how old keyboard have lot longer key travels and yet it feels soft. I dislike how modern MacBook Pro's keyboard, especially the newer revision of magic keyboard. Key travel is shorter and key press feel harsh, making subpar typing experience compare with unibody and retina MacBook Pro. This is especially true when it compare with butterfly keyboard, where I never loved these keyboard.

I also order new battery for couple unibody MacBook Pros, even with new battery, battery life is kind poor compare with modern more efficient MacBook Pros, especially one with Apple Silicons. I can get 3-4 hours of usage if I am only doing web browsing, office tasks. Any media streaming will kill battery in less than 2 hours.
My favorite portable keyboards are off the powerbook g4 line. KBs are incredibly pleasant to type on. With that being said I do like the 2008-9 chicklet keyboards on these aluminum unibody MB & MBPs quite a bit. Along the same time frame, the aluminum Apple kb A1243 is quite pleasant as well - certainly of all the Apple desktop kbs I have, the a1243 is my absolute favorite for modern-ish desktop macs andin many ways they are analogous to the kbs on these original aluminum unibody MB & MBPs aside from white key caps vs black. I agree the current kbs are absolute garbage. I fail to see how they are supposed to be good. It's like the design team was like "hmmm how can we design an absolute garbage kb and sell it to fanbois as newest greatest thing for a lot of money?" lol :D

As far as battery life, my batteries are not that great but they are cheap knock off batteries so I did not expect much battery life on them out right ($20 shipped a few years back). I think new I got about 2-3 hours and now I get about 1-1.5 hours unplugged. Its about time to replace this one Im using.
 

originaldotexe

macrumors 6502
Jun 12, 2020
254
430
Kentucky
i got this one for free a couple years ago, it is a mid 2012 pre-retina 13" model. i put in 8gb ram and a 240gb ssd i had lying around.
View attachment 2030689
has some minimal screen damage (light spot in the middle, doesnt usually bother me unless the brightness is all the way up and im on a dark image), and that one missing key wasnt missing when i got it, it just broke off one day and wouldnt go back on :/
cant beat free though!

i would like to get a 2013-2015 retina 13" model once i can find a good one for cheap. or maybe i will just replace the screen & keyboard in this one, the battery still holds a good charge (81% health on a 10 year old battery)
 

Aoligei

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 16, 2020
1,147
1,363
My favorite portable keyboards are off the powerbook g4 line. KBs are incredibly pleasant to type on. With that being said I do like the 2008-9 chicklet keyboards on these aluminum unibody MB & MBPs quite a bit. Along the same time frame, the aluminum Apple kb A1243 is quite pleasant as well - certainly of all the Apple desktop kbs I have, the a1243 is my absolute favorite for modern-ish desktop macs andin many ways they are analogous to the kbs on these original aluminum unibody MB & MBPs aside from white key caps vs black. I agree the current kbs are absolute garbage. I fail to see how they are supposed to be good. It's like the design team was like "hmmm how can we design an absolute garbage kb and sell it to fanbois as newest greatest thing for a lot of money?" lol :D

As far as battery life, my batteries are not that great but they are cheap knock off batteries so I did not expect much battery life on them out right ($20 shipped a few years back). I think new I got about 2-3 hours and now I get about 1-1.5 hours unplugged. Its about time to replace this one Im using.

I have never owned any PowerPC based Mac, so I cannot tell how good the keyboard was on powerbook line.

My first ever Mac was early 2008 white plastic MacBook, while these key feel quite hard to type on. However, I have used this Apple desktop keyboard before

il_794xN.3904588618_nhet.jpg


which I loved. I don't quite like the current Magic Keyboard line up, feel quite hard to type on.
 

Aoligei

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 16, 2020
1,147
1,363
it is a thinkpad l14 gen 2 amd (ryzen 3 pro 5450u, 16gb ddr4, 2tb nvme ssd). i use it alongside my 2012 mbp as my 2 laptops

The only ThinkPad that I have is T430S with Haswell processor, 8GB DDR3 and 500GB SSD. I use it mainly for streaming videos online which hooked with my living room TV.

By the way, I love ThinkPad keyboard, it has the BEST keyboard that I have ever used.

I am daily driving 2020 MacBook Air alone side my HP Ryzen 3 laptop (Ryzen 3, 16GB DDR4, 500GB NVME SSD).
 

originaldotexe

macrumors 6502
Jun 12, 2020
254
430
Kentucky
The only ThinkPad that I have is T430S with Haswell processor, 8GB DDR3 and 500GB SSD. I use it mainly for streaming videos online which hooked with my living room TV.

By the way, I love ThinkPad keyboard, it has the BEST keyboard that I have ever used.

I am daily driving 2020 MacBook Air alone side my HP Ryzen 3 laptop (Ryzen 3, 16GB DDR4, 500GB NVME SSD).
t430 is good, i had the t430, t530 and x230 tablet. they are very well made machines. my l14 gen 2 amd sadly is not up to par with those, the paint on the keys & mouse buttons is already starting to rub off after only owning it for about half a year :/
 

Aoligei

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 16, 2020
1,147
1,363
t430 is good, i had the t430, t530 and x230 tablet. they are very well made machines. my l14 gen 2 amd sadly is not up to par with those, the paint on the keys & mouse buttons is already starting to rub off after only owning it for about half a year :/

This is the oldest PC I have ever owned.
 

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Aoligei

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 16, 2020
1,147
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lol that brings me back. my first pc was an acer aspire desktop probably from the same era. i still have it actually
Well, I lost the original recovery disk. Finding drivers for Windows XP is kind pain in the a**. You gonna be appreciate Windows update will take care all driver issue with Windows 10 and Windows 11.

By the way, I have had an eMachine Celeron desktop PC that my father brought in the same year with bulky CRT monitor. I don't have this machine anymore.

81awcUBKkyL._AC_SL1500_.jpg


(P.S.This is not mine, this is from Google picture search)

And somehow, Windows XP doesn't feel slow on old 5400RPM IDE hard drive. Probably because Windows XP is still very light OS and SSD is not a thing back then. Or it could be I have nothing installed on this machine, because I can't get driver issue figured out.
 

originaldotexe

macrumors 6502
Jun 12, 2020
254
430
Kentucky
Well, I lost the original recovery disk. Finding drivers for Windows XP is kind pain in the a**. You gonna be appreciate Windows update will take care all driver issue with Windows 10 and Windows 11.

By the way, I have had an eMachine Celeron desktop PC that my father brought in the same year with bulky CRT monitor. I don't have this machine anymore.

View attachment 2030822

(P.S.This is not mine, this is from Google picture search)

And somehow, Windows XP doesn't feel slow on old 5400RPM IDE hard drive. Probably because Windows XP is still very light OS and SSD is not a thing back then. Or it could be I have nothing installed on this machine, because I can't get driver issue figured out.
oh, im aware about the drivers. i still use windows 98se and 2000 regularly on old machines :p

you will probably have better luck searching for device id's rather than the name or model number of the device when looking for old drivers. thats how i find all the drivers for my retro systems
 

Aoligei

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 16, 2020
1,147
1,363
I took the time to throw Ubuntu 20.04 onto one of my a1278 5,1 macbook and it runs incredibly smooth. Ubuntu has evolved into a very polished and intuitive OS. It really is quite similar to macOS and a natural OS evolution/choice for those of us with aging Intel Penryn macs.

View attachment 2031221

View attachment 2031222

That is very cool.

I have been on and off with Ubuntu since 2008 and have experienced every single version of Ubuntu. But I could never stay on Linux for very long time, because I dislike command line and most of help article requires command line.

However, my favourite distribution would be Linux Mint, which itself is Ubuntu based.
 
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dandeco

macrumors 65816
Dec 5, 2008
1,248
1,048
Brockton, MA
i got this one for free a couple years ago, it is a mid 2012 pre-retina 13" model. i put in 8gb ram and a 240gb ssd i had lying around.
View attachment 2030689
Yep, that was a very popular model, made from mid-2012 to fall 2016 as an affordable Mac laptop option for those who wanted more power than a MacBook Air but didn't want to spend more on a Retina MacBook Pro. I've seen a bunch of students at my college still using them during the last third of the previous decade. We also have one at my workplace with a 2015 copyright year on the bottom, otherwise the specs are identical (we have Mac OS 10.13 High Sierra installed on it for running older 32-bit Mac applications). I actually have a 13" one as well, but it has a 2.9 GHz dual-core i7 processor, maxed out to 16 GB of RAM and with a 512 GB SSD installed running Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, for the purpose of running some older Mac applications.
 
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bobesch

macrumors 68020
Oct 21, 2015
2,142
2,220
Kiel, Germany
I have never owned any PowerPC based Mac, so I cannot tell how good the keyboard was on powerbook line.

My first ever Mac was early 2008 white plastic MacBook, while these key feel quite hard to type on. However, I have used this Apple desktop keyboard before

View attachment 2030733

which I loved. I don't quite like the current Magic Keyboard line up, feel quite hard to type on.
This white USB-keyboard model is the only one to maintain & clean properly. Well, it does need thorough spring cleaning
I have never owned any PowerPC based Mac, so I cannot tell how good the keyboard was on powerbook line.

My first ever Mac was early 2008 white plastic MacBook, while these key feel quite hard to type on. However, I have used this Apple desktop keyboard before

View attachment 2030733

which I loved. I don't quite like the current Magic Keyboard line up, feel quite hard to type on.
Those white keyboard with translucent body that came with the white&acrylic G5 and intel-iMacs are my least favorite keyboards and are indeed uncomfortable to type on, though there were the best to maintain, since they can be disassembled, fully cleaned and reassembled without damage.

The coloured acrylic keyboards, which came with the early iMac G3 are my favorites, but unfortunately they lack of some mission-critical keys.
The black&translucent acrylic keyboards, that came with the late iMac G3 and the Cube G4 etc. are my second favorite ones. (The model with white keys coming with the Goosneck /iMac G4 tend to get an ugly yellow tint and look aweful.)
Both these colored and black/acrylic keyboards are hard to open for cleaning, because plastic connctions are impossible to loose and tend to break on any attempt. The only option is to open those keyboards is from the backside (where the USB-cable comes out), bend them open at the backside cautiosly (about 1-2 inch) like a clamshell and remove the innerts for cleaning, but leave the plastic-connections at the frontside untouched. Quite cumbersome but possible.

At work I like the small white/aluminum USB-keyboards most (the ones without number-block), since for hygenic-reasons they can be covered with the same type of TPU-cover, that where offered for the pre-retina Unibody-Macbooks.
Too bad - starting with the aluminum-keyboards any maintainance is nearly impossible.

So on the long run that kind of white-translucent keyboard of the white&acryl G4/intel iMacs might be the one to survive all the others ... Unless they where dumped because of "minor reasons" like uncomfortable typing or looking filthy because of visible lint and dirt trapped in the translucent case.
Mind, that after getting some TLC they always start to look like new (and typing feels as bad as before).
 

flat6pilot

macrumors member
Dec 27, 2020
42
43
Glad I'm not the only one with a handful of old Macbooks!!

2010 MBP 15 i5
2011 MBP 13 i5
Mid-2012 15 i7
Late 2013 13 i7

2020 MBA M1 for portability.

Didn't intend to have five laptops but as friends, family and co-workers move into newer machines I'll ask if they'd like to sell their old devices and usually get them for next to nothing. It's so much fun to tinker with the old unibodies and modernize them with an SSD. For basic Web, Netflix and Youtube the 2010 and 2011 are just as snappy as the M1 Air.
 

dandeco

macrumors 65816
Dec 5, 2008
1,248
1,048
Brockton, MA
Didn't intend to have five laptops but as friends, family and co-workers move into newer machines I'll ask if they'd like to sell their old devices and usually get them for next to nothing. It's so much fun to tinker with the old unibodies and modernize them with an SSD. For basic Web, Netflix and Youtube the 2010 and 2011 are just as snappy as the M1 Air.
Indeed! My 2012 i7 15" unibody MacBook Pro is also just as snappy as my M1 Air when it comes to web-browsing and video streaming, and even video editing seems half as fast as it does on the Air.
 

DouglasCarroll

macrumors 6502
Dec 27, 2016
386
398
I just found a laptop that I've been wanting forever in the recycle bin at work and was able to save it from an unceremonious death. I found a perfect condition 15" Mid 2012 MacBook Pro with the upgraded (!!!) higher resolution (1680 x 1050) matte finish screen and 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M discrete graphics card. I threw in 16GB of ram, and a 1TB SSD and put Catalina on it. What a great machine, and it's nice having one last laptop with a DVD drive so I can rip DVD's or CD's. It even has a good battery, even though the OS says it's time to "service the battery", it's actually working just fine so I'll put that off for awhile.

Anyways, I agree, I LOVE the older MacBook Pro machines, they still have a lot of life in them.

:)
 

DouglasCarroll

macrumors 6502
Dec 27, 2016
386
398
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