Q: Upgrade Mid-2009 Macbook Pro or buy new laptop
Hi, Apple world.
So it's late 2015 and I will still have my mid-2009 Macbook pro bought new so 6 year old laptop.
specs
2 RAM
2.26 GHz
160 GB SATA
Intel Core 2 Duo
Battery Status: Service Battery
Startup disk is full message all the time.
Its takes me up to an hour sometimes to upload or attach a file to an email or to blackboard and doesn't multitasks very well. Once in awhile it has to rebooted itself when I was using word, excel, and Chrome. Plus I can't play league of legends but my computer is so behind. I am college student and looking to either upgrade this laptop or buy a new laptop. After looking at the cost to upgrade I got around 430-500 bucks to get my laptop to speed and to todays tech. I think that a new battery, upgrade ram to 6 or 8, and upgrade to 500gb or 1 tb SDD is what it would take.
So my question is upgrade for 430-500, purchase new laptop, or is there another way to solve my issues?
MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2009), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)
Posted on Sep 23, 2015 7:54 PM
You're not going to get a brand new notebook for $430-$500.
If you're a college student you won't have time to play League Of Legends.
If you're using Yosemite with 2GB RAM no wonder it is slow. I was given a late '08 MacBook with 2GB RAM and Mavericks and it said there was 0.02GB of RAM left to run applications! That is essentially nothing. Once you use up RAM you start using the hard drive and if your computer has a stock hard drive then likely it is a 5400 rpm model which is doubly slow.
Get a new battery. Check out prices on OWC (mac-sales.com) for what is reported to be good batteries but much lower than Apple's prices.
Increase your RAM. I put 8GB in my MacBook for about $55 (I bought Crucial RAM). 8 is probably more than you really need and if you want to save a dollar or two go for 6.
You need to work out the numbers on this but instead of putting in a large capacity SSD, instead replace your optical drive with a SSD and keep your other drive for data storage. Large capacity SSDs are very expensive. Furthermore, SSDs improve speed in some ways but are sometimes not the best kind of drive for other things. They help immensely in booting the computer and running applications. If you still need an optical drive (which most people only use once or twice a month) you can get an enclosure which will house the one you remove. Some of what this will cost depends upon what you're willing to spend and acceptance of cheaper items. You can get everything through OWC but it will cost a bit more. A 120GB SSD + SSD tray + optical drive enclosure from OWC is about $120. You can get budget items from other vendors (e.g., Amazon) for about $85 but have to realize you are getting 4 star rated items instead of 5 star, with some associated quality risk.
Another consideration is replace the hard drive. I am not familiar with the 2009MBP but notebooks tended to come with 5400 rpm drives. 7200 rpm drives are faster but use up battery a bit quicker. I just purchased a 1TB 2.5" HGST HDD for $70. This would address your storage problem and also speed up your computer a bit. You could do this and get a SSD, or keep it low cost and just replace the HDD.
Again I am not familiar with the 2009 MBP but with my MacBook all this can be done with 2 kinds of screwdriver (a tiny #000 Phillips and a T6 Torx) Finding those may be the hard part, though if you make a purchase from OWC they may be included or you can buy them for a few extra dollars.
By the way, there are also "fusion" drives which have HDD and SSD components all in one. In some scenarios they work out well, in others you are better off going with separate.
Given all the above I would say you can upgrade your 09 to a "like new" feel (if you get the SSD) or at least rejuvenate it (HDD only) for your $400 budget.
Posted on Sep 24, 2015 5:56 AM