Good deal for a used Mac Air?

I'm looking for a newer laptop for my wife and this has been steadily lowered in price on Craigslist in my area. Is it a good deal for a used Mac? (I've always been a PC guy) Listing quoted below! Thanks for your advice!

 

No, I would not get that one. It is a first generation MacBook Air (MBA) with an physical hard drive and terrible integrated graphics. It is nice that it comes with all of those accessories but that particular system will be rather slow and the battery is already slowing down. That particular system came out in early 2008 so it is already 3 years old. At the absolute most, the battery has another year in it (I would say around 4-5 months) and that will cost quite a bit to get replaced (~$150-$250 depending on where you go).

Also, there were some issues with the first generation MBAs. The flip down hatch covering the USB port was a tight fit so many people had to buy USB cable extensions just to plug in a thumb drive. Second, the processor has been known to overheat. Apple released a few updates to fix this but they aren't working for everyone and Snow Leopard can still experience a kernel panic due to the hardware. The main problem is that the system relies on the processor (which is already rather slow) for video decoding (playback) instead of off-loading it to dedicated hardware. This means that CPU temperatures are going to increase when playing back video content and that increases the chances of experiencing a kernel panic or total system shutdown due to excessive heat.

I know that $500 is tempting for a Mac, especially with all of those accessories, but it is a 3 year old system that had problems back in the day and will definitely need some maintenance rather soon. Factor that in and you could really be looking a $750 for that MBA. It also wouldn't be very good if you want to use it as a desktop (i.e. just sitting there) since the unit has only one USB port and the whole point of a MBA is to allow for extreme portability.

 

I wouldn't recommend paying for any Macbook Air unless it is a model that has the Geforce 320m or Intel HD 3000 graphics. The older geforce and intel version ones are not worth the money most people ask, and definitely not worth $500.

 

I've got an extra 1.86ghz core 2 duo / geforce 320m under warranty until march 2014. I'll put it up in the BST thread.

 

kornchild2002, thanks for your extensive, very informative reply! that was super helpful in understanding the issues!

everyone else, thanks too