Old aluminium Macbook Pro still worth considering?

Hades · 14 Jan 2010 at 12:09

Is an old C2D 2.16ghz MBP still worth considering? How reliable are they? Do they still hold good money? Believe it or not I think I prefer the look of them but the ones which support 4gb RAM are hard to find now. Also how good is the X1600 graphics card (will it play any kind of game at all)?

bigredshark · 14 Jan 2010 at 12:47

Hades said:
Is an old C2D 2.16ghz MBP still worth considering? How reliable are they? Do they still hold good money? Believe it or not I think I prefer the look of them but the ones which support 4gb RAM are hard to find now. Also how good is the X1600 graphics card (will it play any kind of game at all)?

I have an even older core duo macbook pro, with 2GB RAM (max) and the x1600. It's been a great machine and it still plays COD4 quite acceptably (for an old laptop at least - it's smooth even during action even if the detail is fairly low).

I'm fairly keen to replace it though, it's struggling with Aperture these days and I'd have done so already if I wasn't holding out hope for a quad core macbook pro in the next few months.

It'll be a very acceptable browsing machine but I wouldn't want to do anything too intensive on it - then again it depends what you can get one for. It'll be beaten on performance by even the standard Macbook config basically but it's still capable enough for light use. Also battery life will likely be rubbish unless you get a new battery (which ain't all that cheap).

Hades · 14 Jan 2010 at 13:38

It's a little expensive to be honest.. £600 although it has been refurbished with a new case and new battery, Snow Leopard and Win 7.

bigredshark · 14 Jan 2010 at 13:39

At £600 it's not a good deal, maybe at £300-400 but when it's £600 it's not a hell of a lot more to get a brand new Macbook, which for 95% of people will be a better machine.

Hades · 14 Jan 2010 at 13:42

Yes good point. I do like the older look though, and the full DVI output. But it does seem too much.

disfunktion · 14 Jan 2010 at 21:10

bigredshark said:
At £600 it's not a good deal, maybe at £300-400 but when it's £600 it's not a hell of a lot more to get a brand new Macbook, which for 95% of people will be a better machine.

First gen CoreDuo Macbooks still go for around £3/400 on auction sites. I've seen some go for near £500.

Makes you wonder if people do any research into prices before they bid on items.

Spyhop · 14 Jan 2010 at 21:18

disfunktion said:
Makes you wonder if people do any research into prices before they bid on items.

Bobby wants one of them thar new fangled Mac Books.

.Andy · 15 Jan 2010 at 07:23

Just to give you a view on its worth - I sold my 2.16Ghz MBP, 3Gb RAM and a 320Gb 7200 rpm disk for £575 about 2 months ago. The case wasn't the greatest however...

As everyone above has said it depends on what you want to do with it but at £600 its not the deal of the century. Try putting the specs in Mac2sell and take a view from there.