Three years is a long time. In the world of electronics it might as well be an eternity. So you’d think I’d be surprised to report that I’ve been using my black Macbook for a little more than three years. But I’m not surprised at all. Why?
Two years ago, near the one-year anniversary of my purchasing this black Macbook I wrote (sorry for the long quote, but please read on):
“I use my Macbook on a daily basis. I’ve put it through its paces. I’ve taken it on several trips across the country and it has always performed perfectly for me. The battery life is sufficient, the screen size is nearly perfect, its extensibility with external monitors and even my television is an added benefit. I have no real complaints.
I’d say the only thing that I would change, now that I’ve used it for an entire year, would be the size of the hard drive (though much larger sizes are now available in current models). The hard drive is only 80GB in this model of the Macbook which is not large enough for me to keep all of my music, video, and photos locally on the computer. Being that I’m using a laptop that may never be possible so I’ll always be tethered to some external drive(s) when I need that data.
I’ve had the opportunity to upgrade to a Macbook Pro but I am going to stick with this Macbook. I may even run it into the ground I love it so much. Even if I did upgrade to a larger hard drive, faster processor, and the ability to have much RAM – I’d probably still stick with the black Macbook. I really like the form factor, size, and weight of this computer. It has been the best computer I’ve ever owned.”
Not too bad a review. Two years later I still have the same, single complaint about the Macbook model I have – hard drive space. Today more than ever 80GB is simply not enough to do, well, anything with media. Photos from my DSLR, on average for a compressed JPEG, are about 3-5Mb a photo. Video, music, documents, podcasts, TV shows and movies from iTunes, etc. all take up a lot of space. If it weren’t for a few external hard drives I’d be all but stuck. But that isn’t the point of this post and you all deal with this the same as I do I’d bet.
After three years of using this Macbook I still feel the same about it today as I did then. It has been the best computer I’ve ever owned. The Macbook looks the same today as it did the very first day I bought it. This isn’t due to my care, but rather to its rigid design. I have never reinstalled the operating system, it has never slowed down, and I have never needed to reboot it due to freezing. That isn’t due to seldom use, in fact I’ve used it nearly every single day for many, many hours a time for all three years, but rather to the Mac OS being simply awesome. I’ve really enjoyed using this computer.
Having said that I’d be remiss not to mention that I recently purchased a replacement battery for the Macbook. The original one simple won’t hold a charge for more than a few minutes. According to Apple’s own documentation they acknowledge the number of times you can recharge the battery – and I exceeded that and then some.
I said, in the one year review, that I’d probably stick with the black Macbook because I like the form factor, size, and weight of the computer. Times change. The black Macbook is no more. Apple no longer offers it. It has been replaced with what is now the unibody aluminum 13″ Macbook Pro. It also looks like a fine machine.
It is time to move on. Eliza’s computer is, if you can believe it, much older than the black Macbook and so she will be getting this computer and I will be moving onto another one. But to what? I’ll leave that for another time.
My review of my black MacBook would read pretty much the same as yours. My fiancée inherited mine last fall when I upgraded, and it’s still a great machine. It could easily be mistaken for being only a few months old (It turned 3 last week).
If you want to clean it up even more, use a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Sounds crazy, but it works. Just keep it away from the screen, but the rest is fair game.
Mr. Clean Magic Eraser huh? I may just give that a try (though I have to say the only part of it that is discolored a little is the trackpad).
If your hard drive is too small, it’s remarkably easy to upgrade–I moved to a 320gb drive from the 120gb, and it was super easy, especially since I had a SuperDuper! image that I could copy to the new drive.
Where did you get the drive? Perhaps in a few weeks I’ll upgrade the black Macbook from 80Gb to something bigger. Even though 80Gb is more than Eliza has currently, it won’t be enough for very long.
I’m pretty sure I ended up buying it on Newegg.
Doing a Google Product search I was able to find a 320Gb hard drive for less than 100 bucks. That seems incredibly inexpensive. Do you know how much you paid? And what the specs were?
Just took a look, and I actually bought it on eBay for $79.99 plus $6.49 shipping. I’m pretty sure it’s this drive:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=377
If you can find one for a decent price, you might consider going for a 7200 RPM drive, instead of the 5400, for a bit of a performance boost.
Glad to hear that it’s still alive and kicking after three years. I’m insanely jealous of anyone who can afford to upgrade before their existing computer is absolutely 100% useless and dead, which is the only time I ever get to upgrade.
Anxious to hear what you’ve picked up or are about to pick up as a replacement.
Even though this black Macbook isn’t “absolutely 100% useless and dead” my wife’s computer, an old iBook, pretty much is. So while the need to upgrade isn’t coming from me quite yet, she really, really needs something that works. So I too follow the same pattern as you do (as I do with most things I buy). Buy, use until nearly dead, replace.
It will be three years in August. I just took mine to the Apple store because the case started to crack for the second time. They replaced the entire keypad, trackpad and handrest.This computer has been great. I upgraded my HDD to 320gb and my ram to 2gb. I plan on using this laptop for another 1-2 years, it still works great so why buy another one.
Still using my black Macbook (mid-2007); I upgraded the hard drive to 160GB and installed 4GB a couple of years ago. This machine still keeps up with daily activities, and that is even after dropping it an unknown amount of times from waist height on the hard tile floors in my apartment (if it would break I could justify buying a new one, especially since I have insurance to cover replacement). My only problem at this point is performance in Parallels running Windows 7, but booting via Boot Camp is just dandy, and there is a small piece of plastic missing (1″ x 1mm) on the right corner of the palm rest.
Rick: Parallels is pretty slow with Windows 7 so I simply reverted to Windows XP for my use (since the software I needed to use in Windows worked well in XP).