thomas fitzgerald.net

I’ve been tinkering with a little project for a while now. I have a two and a half year old macbook pro that I’ve been slowly adding new parts to in an attempt to breathe new life into it. I started by upping the ram from 2gb to 4gb a while ago. I then proceeded to replace the hard drive with a 500gb model, replacing the 160 that was in it. Along the way my motherboard failed due to the infamous nvidia graphics failure, but the upside to this was a brand new motherboard courtesy of Apple. Finally, I have replaced the rapidly failing battery. I would normally have just bought a new laptop, but there was nothing really wrong with this one, bar the above.

There’s nothing dramatically new in the newer machines that I won’t have access to, except perhaps some of the GPU functions in snow leopard, but this is a perfectly good machine. Thanks to my upgrades I have plenty of space, a fresh battery and ample RAM, and it should do me for another year or two. It is a testament to both the hardware design and the durability of OS X that this computer feels in no way old, and still seems as snappy and responsive as the day I bought it. I think it’s also indicative of the stability the move to intel brought the platform. Before the intel switch you were constantly moving processor type, adding vector units, changing architecture etc. Now, apart from the newer screens and enclosures, there’s not that much substantially different from the MacBook Pro I have and the newer ones. Faster perhaps, but nothing revolutionary. Well, except the battery perhaps, but then at least I can replace this one myself without having to send the machine off. I think once there’s an Apple Store in Ireland, and replacing the battery in a MacBook Pro won’t involve sending your computer away, I’ll be a little less skeptical of the non user replaceable battery. Until then I’ll stick with my smooth running upgraded older edition.

Of course if they ever get around to adding blu-ray to their machines then I might have to get out the credit card.

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