Macbook 1.1 Questions

My wife has a Macbook 1.1 (13", white core duo) that she's had for at least six years, and which she totally loves. We've had Apple replace the casing once under warranty, and I've had to replace the bottom casing once myself after the warranty expired. I've also had to replace the optical drive. We're back to a point where the casing is cracked (again) and the optical drive no longer works (again), but she doesn't want to replace it. I'm not too concerned about the cosmetics, since I can always get a hard shell over of eBay or from a retailer, and USB/firewire external optical drives are cheap (and OWC apparently has pretty good prices for 2x1GB RAM). I am worried about support. Lion isn't supported on the core duo, and I have no clue how long apple supports iterations of OSX. My Mac experience started with a Mac Plus and ended with a Lombard Powerbook G3. Any advice on what to do with her laptop? I'm thinking either Win 7 or some flavour of Linux if Snow Leopard will no longer get patches and security updates from Apple.

 

There's really nothing wrong with continuing to run Snow Leopard. Lion is a decent upgrade, but it isn't essential. Moreover, running Windows on it will probably just make the machine more vulnerable due its prominence as a target for malware. With Linux, you'll just encounter compatibility problems. I'd recommend sticking with SL, its a great OS.

 

Thanks for the input. Should I just get a shell case, memory, and external optical drive?

 

Maybe it is time to retire the machine.

 

Maybe. I've started looking for used Mac deals, since she's not a Windows person. Our six month old ate into our bank account pretty quickly.

 

You could try an improvised repair to the case, do a memory upgrade, and perhaps forgo a new optical drive unless it is actually used.

WRT the case, you should consider whether the damage makes a replacement necessary or even worth the money.

 

We went ahead and replaced the Macbook with a Windows machine that suits her needs and fit out budget. Now I'm thinking of selling the Macbook and using some of that (if possible) to pick up an SSD for her machine to create a one-off Macbook Air clone. Any ideas as to what I could expect to get for the Macbook? It has 1GB of RAM, a 60GB HDD, 1.8GHz CoreDuo, and aside from the optical drive and the cracks on the side of the case, works great.

Again, thanks in advance

 

$50 maybe?

 

I'd say you cold get 150$ or so for it...

 

Thanks. I'll put it up and use the $$ to get an SSD for my wife.

Sent from my SGH-i917 using Board Express

 

If you live in the US, bring it to Best Buy and trade it in. You may end up getting more for it. I traded in my MacBook from the same era and got just over $400 for it. But then again, my MacBook also had 2GB DDR2 and a 320GB hard drive.