Useful life of MacBook Pro - MA895LL/A

Question

Level 1

0 points

Useful life of MacBook Pro - MA895LL/A

I'm someone thinking about buying their first MAC after being a PC person for years, but I need your help. I have the opportunity to buy a used Macbook Pro 15 MA895LL/A (about 4 years old) for about $700. It has upgraded memory to 4GB, anti-glare screen, and brand new battery. What is the useful life of a this model/age laptop. I'd hate to buy it only to have it fall apart after a year. The original owner has taken very good care of it...not sure of which operating system he's running, but I know he likes to keep current so I suspect it's the latest this model will allow.

MA895LL/A

Posted on Mar 24, 2011 11:09 AM

Reply

Answer 1

bdmarsha

Level 4

2,580 points

Mar 24, 2011 1:44 PM in response to macdeux

Welcome to the discussions!

That model (introduced in June, 2007) should be fine with the latest (Snow Leopard) operating system. Only disadvantages over current models is somewhat weaker performance, RAM limited to 6 GB, and it originally shipped with a hard drive that is small by today's standards. The price looks good; most Apple products outlast their obsolescence so it should not fall apart. You may want to invest in latest operating system, more RAM, and a bigger hard drive although it will work fine as is.

bd

Reply

Answer 2

macdeux Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 24, 2011 2:23 PM in response to bdmarsha

Thanks so much for the quick response. This computer has 4 GM Ram, a
120GM Hard Drive, and Mac OS x 10.6.6. Still look good?

Reply

Answer 3

bdmarsha

Level 4

2,580 points

Mar 24, 2011 4:19 PM in response to macdeux

RAM is fine, but I cannot live with a 120GB drive; these are very inexpensive and fairly easy to replace. Be sure to get both the original installation disk(s) that came with the MacBook Pro as well as the Snow Leopard install DVD.

bd

Reply

Answer 4

Mar 25, 2011 4:11 AM in response to macdeux

Don't buy a bigger hard drive unless you find that you need more storage space.
I have the original MBP from 2006. It has a 100 GB drive with 50 GB free. I upgraded to Leopard and then to Snow Leopard when it came out. I quickly dropped back to Leopard because of all of the programs that weren't supported. I use the MBP every day for about 1.5 hours on battery. The first three Sony batteries were junk. I finally got an SMP battery in 2007 and it is still working fine.

Reply

Answer 5

JoeyR

Level 6

8,305 points

Mar 25, 2011 4:50 AM in response to macdeux

I would recommend replacing the hard drive not so much due to the capacity (if you don't need it)... but more due to it's age. If, as you say, it is a used machine which is about 4 years old... replacing the drive would be a good safety measure unless the seller can let you know that it was replaced fairly recently. If you're getting a nice machine, you might as well make sure you have a reliable drive in it before you start saving too much data to it (keeping backups is important whether you replace the drive or not).

Reply

Answer 6

macdeux Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 31, 2011 4:50 PM in response to macdeux

Thanks for all your responses so far. One final question -- what would YOU pay for it?

Reply

Answer 7

Mar 31, 2011 5:20 PM in response to macdeux

for that MacBook Pro 700 dollars sounds about right to me and if I had the cash I would plunk it down!

Reply

Answer 8

a brody

Level 10

85,314 points

Mar 31, 2011 5:34 PM in response to macdeux

Make sure nothing is missing*:

http://www.macmaps.com/usedrefurbished.html

Reply

Answer 9

Oct 21, 2011 8:33 AM in response to Retired Engineer

I am completely ignorant about Macs and Apple - my background is Unix/Windows/Linux

Would you please elaborate on your comment "I quickly dropped back to Leopard because of all of the programs that weren't supported." ? what programs and how/why are they not supported.

-I am looking at buying the same laptop (MA895LLA) but with LION (10.7.2) 11C74 to be used as part of a home studio project (music + video + graphics)

Is there hardware support in LION for such ancient hardware?

Thanks

Reply

Answer 10

bigTds

Level 1

4 points

Dec 6, 2011 12:41 PM in response to macdeux

i Just purchased this same model last night and paid $400 cash. She was asking $550 on CL and accepted $400. MY BUDDY SAID I SCORED. THE MACHINE IS FLAWLESS. THIS IS MY FIRST MAC COMP. I DO HAVE AN IPHONE AND IPAD ALSO.. I ALREADY CAN TELL THAT THE MAC IS BY FAR A SUPERIOR MACHINE TO THE PC.

Reply

Answer 11

Dec 6, 2011 12:57 PM in response to macdeux

One thing I'd suggest though is look at whether you do want to upgrade it at all. If you are going to up the RAM to 6Gb, add a hard drive, update the OS and anything else for it, the deal may not be worth it. You can get a brand new 13" MBP for $1200 - dual core i5, 4Gb RAM, 500Gb hard drive, the latest OS and with a full one year warranty.

If the full price of setting up that four year old machine climbs much closer to that $1200 (of course there would also be tax) mark, I don't see the point in getting the used machine.

If you are happy with the used machine as is, then the price difference is much greater. Also, even though the built in hard drive is 120Gb, do you already have any good USB2 external drives? You could reformat one as HFS+ and use that to augment the internal storage if you don't want to spring for a new internal drive now (I'm assuming coming from windows you aren't likely to have any firewire drives hanging around, but USB 2 would not be a bottleneck on that machine for file/data storage).

Of course, useful life depends heavily on what you use the machine for. There was a post here this past week from someone who had just upgraded their Pismo (a G3 powerbook first introduced in 2000) to a MBP as they finally felt the need to "move up"!

Reply