macbook black and windows 7?

hey guys ive got the opportunity to buy my friends old macbook for cheap bucks and its the old 2006 black macbook, basically dual core 2ghz and 2gb or ram which i will upgrade to 4gb, i was wondering since its on an old intel GMA 950 can it run windows 7 with aero and all its goodness? while i will primarily use OSX i would like the option to boot in windows 7.

anyone has tried on an GMA950 here? thanks thats my only concern


ALSO

about hairline cracks on the macbook, i read that apple would replace/fix it for free, and there are some hairline cracks on the palm rest, think apple will still honor it?

 

The Apple Store is still honoring the replacement of top cases with the cracking/splintering palm rest issue. I just had a top case replaced myself. Just bring it in and they should be able to either fix it right then and there, or get it back to you in a day or so. It's a quick fix.

 

awesome thanks do they just replace the top case? or any part of the case that has cracks?

 

The two times I've had it done, they've replaced the top case, keyboard, and track pad. I'm fairly sure that area (where the lid meets the body) is the only thing under this particular warranty fix, but if you point out other cracks and splinters, they may fix them.

Good luck.

 

Don't you need warranty to get the parts replaced?

and for Lokster: your macbook can only handle up to 2GB of RAM

 

2 Responses:

- the palmrest, keyboard and trackpad on the BlackBooks are all one field part, meaning they ALL get replaced when this is serviced. The warranty for this part, because the design SUCKED is extended well beyond AppleCare for any notebook with the flaw. How long, is unknown and not officially stated. I would assume however long Apple officially supports the Black and White MacBook (pre-unibody), this warranty is offered to all owners of the systems. (this was explained to my by a store Mac Genius when my old BlacBook had the problem).

- The Black MacBook runs Win7 quite well. Even 64-bit if you're getting the 4GB RAM. I had my BlacBook set up with Win7x64 RC (back then) and the GMA950 supported Aero (the only difference in the GMA 910 and 950 was Aero support for Vista BTW).

I would highly reccomend the 4GB upgrade, but otherwise you've got a nice machine thats solid (if you get the palmrest fixed and you're gentle from now on) and has a pretty powerful Proc (2.0 C2D is a nice efficient chip).

The only two things I'd caution on, is that if you plan on also running VMs or even your BootCamp partition as a VM, Aero won't work even with the new VMWare or Parallels versions on a 950 since it can't emulate a 3D card inside a VM. This never worked on my MacBook. If you have an x3100 I think you're in business.

Also, You're going to want to install Snow Leopard, Boot Camp 3.0, and the 3.1 update for ultimate driver compatibility with Win7, but I don't think the Black MacBook Pro is supported on Win7 for 3.0 or 3.1 so you may have to dig for the BootCamp64.msi and run it manually from the SL DVD.

I'd get myself an extra battery while you still can too, and enjoy your Black MacBook Experience. Too bad they won't come out with a Black Unibody, I guess they only want the pros to look cool now.

 

thanks for the great explanation mikey,

what i will do is

ipod iphone application development
iweb websites
final cut production
photoshop cs4

i will definitely be multitasking on osx, but for windows 7 is just for simple point and click games as well as some accounting software thats not on macintosh.

i will get the top case replaced
i will buy an extra battery
i will install boot camp 3.1 and update to snow leopard.
i will upgrade to 4gb, i read that 3gb is what mac os can recognize and 4gb is what hopefully windows 7 will recognize.

i need to know also is there a 64bit leopard? where can i get that?

 

Yes, intel gma 950 will enable full aero desktop on windows 7 as long as you have one of the newer drivers with graphic accelerations.

 

where would i find the newest drivers for windows 7?

 

Before you upgrade to 4gigs of RAM, make sure your Mac supports it. Some of the older BlackBooks could only use 2.

 

i cant speak for your macbook in particular but my black macbook is a 2006 and it accepted 4 gig of ram no problem. it all shows up. so i think in that area you will be ok. i did try and put win 64 and had tons of driver issues getting it running. it basically fought me the whole way and i gave up before i got it working. your not going to like it but 32 bit version of win 7 is easier to install on bootcamp. so if you can live with just 3 gigs of ram you might want to consider it. otherwise maybe things have changed since then and you will get lucky

 

If your Mac is model number A1181 and a 2Ghz Core Duo, then it should only accept up to 2gigs of RAM. I have at work I can test out to see what it will recognize

 

it is A1181, right now i do have 2gbs of RAM, but for the sake i will try 4gb. im sure it supports it. searching so far hasnt proved me wrong,

 

Okay, so fired up this BlackBook, model A1181 to confirm that it indeed had 2GB of RAM, two single 1GB sticks.


Shut it down and installed 4GB. The machine simply wouldnt boot. It would just black screen. Removed 1 stick of RAM, leaving a single 2GB stick in, and same result. Reseated both sticks of RAM, and same result. Removed the RAM and installed the two single 1GB sticks and system booted immediately. Just to test to make sure the 2GB sticks werent bad, I put them in a 2.3Ghz Core 2 Duo and booted right on up

 

hey diggy i think your right, ive got 2gb on right now 2x1gb sticks, and im not going to upgrade to 4gb because its way to expensive right now, 80$ =/ but its doing pretty good on snow leopard. like ive got photoshop and iweb and itunes running and all smooth, no hiccups maybe 2gb is all i need?

 

@Diggy -

Sucks to hear that you're being EFI blocked on the 4GB upgrade. The 945 chipset that your mobo is based on can certainly support it, but Apple built some planned obsolesence into some of these machines.

If you're still looking for 64-bit Leopard, you're going to want to go Snow Leopard. Just a refined version of Leopard with some performance enhancements and lots of 64-bit goodies and most native apps (Mail, Address Book, etc.) are native 64-bit apps in it.

You'll still do well with your purposes on 2GB RAM.

Good luck with that machine.

 

I'm sorry - Not @diggy, but @lokster... My Bad.