Always liked the look of pre-Retina unibody MacBooks and they're finally getting to the price where you can buy one just because. There's a 2011 13" for $200 but the guy wont respond yet updates his ad. The rest of the 13s they want $300 for, 15s are around $400 and I see many with the GPU issue. There is however a few 17s for the $400 range too, late 2011 models with anti glare screens.
I didn't really want a giant slab of aluminum but 1920x1200 screen and quad core Sandy Bridge i7 is an actual improvement over my main laptop. Any thoughts on these? I sort of want to try Final Cut.
dont buy old macbooks if you want rossman crawling up your bed sheets at night i've just heard they have poor engineering issues like some caps failing etc, if you're going to buy an apple product at all, just buy it new as thats their company business
Joseph Bennett
Fuck, don't bother with an MBP 13 2011 unless you're willing to upgrade to an SSD and add 8/16GBs of RAM
Kevin Hall
honestly I'd say that about any laptop a year or two ago I bought a 2011 15inch, put 16gb of ram and a 500gb ssd in it. It works incredibly well for everything other than gaming, but its a laptop so I don't really care about that
Blake Stewart
Thats what I wanted to do lol.
The only issue cropping up is the dedicated GPU solder is starting to crack. But 17" MacBooks probably had better owners and there's more cooling. That's why I prefer just buying a 2011 or 2012 13", only a dual core Sandy or Ivy Bridge CPU in them.
Carter Hill
if you want a good upgrade over your main laptop at a budget, honestly just get a 2nd hand T420/T520 ignore the /tpg/ shills but they are genuinely good laptops w/ windows 7. Productive, easily repairable & upgrade-able, cheap if you look around, powerful and they can last a nuclear winter they are well known for a reason
Nolan Bell
If you're going to buy the 13 inch, be sure to replace the old ass thermal paste and clean the fans. While you're replacing the RAM and SSD, try to tighten the hinges too.
Eli Bennett
2011 15" and 17" are subject to GPU failure. 13" is not. This is common knowledge, dumbass.
Grayson Lewis
you wont be able to install the latest version of macos on these or use the current version of final cut or a lot of other shit for that matter
Adam Perry
I'm aware. Hard to ignore that you can go from 800p to 1200p and dual core to quad core+GPU for only $100-200 difference though.
I wasn't planning on upgrading my laptop, it's a 2011 Dell XPS 15" with a dual core i5 and 1gb 525m GPU. 13" MBP would be more portable while the 17" would be more powerful but bulkier.
Bentley Miller
That was my other question. Is it somewhat easy to pirate software for it or no?
I would avoid the 15" and 17" models like the plague because of the GPU issue. These things are all going to go 100% failure at some point, and then you would have only paid $300 for an aluminum paperweight. The 13" are pretty decent though, I just upgraded my sister's old mid-2012 (non-retina) with an SSD and 8 GB of RAM. The thing absolutely flies under Mojave.
Thinkpad W520 owner here. Don't get the T420. The screens are all bad. And don't listen to anyone who says "but muh 1600x900"; the 900p screens are bad, but they're a step up from the truly abysmal 1366x768 screens. Do, however, consider a T520 with a 1920x1080 screen, or the W520 with an even better 1920x1080 panel and the color calibrator.
Easier than Windows in many ways, because you can just copy application folders over without needing to worry about pesky DLLs.
In conclusion, if you are okay with 1280x800 and 13", get the Mac. But better to get a big Thinkpad rather than a big Mac.
Nicholas Davis
I have a top-of-the-line 2015 macbook pro 17" and it still runs amazingly well
