Macbook Pro Score!

[bartman (Bart)]

This might be a boring story, but I just need to vent my Happiness
I scored a late 2009 MBP 13" a few days ago. The owner had enough of it not working properly and was about to toss it into the bin -literally-. He gave it to someone else, but I convinced him to sell it to me for $100 ( he's not that tech minded and was gong to sell it anyway- silly man.....heheheh).
So not being a mac person I googled all the possible fixes etc etc. ( if you want I can elaborate via PM).
To cut a long story short, it was the Hdd. I had purchased a SSD a while back and installed it into my main PC and it worked fine with Vista....just could not be bothered setting it up with all the settings and programs, so I swapped out the drive in the MBP and put the SSD into the MBP. Went to my local Mac shop and purchased SnowLeopard and installed it.......
How bloody easy and quick!
After 30 mins I had a fully functioning MBP

Here is the best part.....It boots in 15 SECONDS!!!!!!!

Over the last three days I have played with settings, setting up email and connectivity, various other programs etc etc..... and I'm thoroughly impressed! I'm guessing the SSD has something to do with the quickness of programs starting and all, but the overall ease at witch I'm able to do things is ....wellllll amazing....including bluetooth setup, wireless setup, watching movies ....the list goes on....
Looks like I have taken a bite of that forbidden apple and I'm hooked!
Should have tried Macs earlier!
Sorry, like I said, just needed to share my happiness
Bartman

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

Could have got one for $67 on Quibids

Actually nice grab. Only used Macs a couple of times. From what I have seen they are reasonably fast machines.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Welcome to the... clique!

H

[Poita (Peter)]

Yeah, OSX flies with a SSD.

If you want to upgrade to lion I'd recommend maxing out the RAM.
MBPs are very finicky with the RAM they will accept, so a lot of junkier RAM won't work with them, or will be flakey.
If you do upgrade I'd recommend getting the RAM from crucial.com, it really just works and is rock-solid and guaranteed to work in the MBP.

Nice score, the firewire is handy too.

[Poita (Peter)]

Oh, and beware of Quibids.
http://www.theage.com.au/digital-lif...105-1plxc.html

[2stroke (Jay)]

Lol would have went a 7200 wd black for space, but thats a dam nice score for $100. Love osx as well here, its just more easy to use. The only thing macs suck for are overpricing and lack of gaming but theres a ton of source games now that support osx thankgod

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Sweet!! Something else to consider if you're like me and short on disk space, but rarely use the optical drive. I bought another 750GB disk and this kit that allows you to pull out the optical drive, mount the new hard disk in this chassis, and install that where the optical drive was. Doubled my disk space! VMWare runs much more happily now.

[kustard (Simon)]

A very nice catch indeed

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Good stuff Bart. Enjoy. Welcome to the light side.

Yes, MacBooks - of any variety - are fast, and even faster with SSD's. The newer machines come with then standard now - and even the i5 and i7 MacBook Airs are sensational with SSD's coming standard in them now. Smaller, faster and damned-well priced. Not as well priced as yours though.... LOL

Amazing that this bloke who was going to chuck it because of a simple bum drive. Loopy.

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Originally Posted by Octane

Welcome to the... clique!

H

[lacad01 (Adam)]

Sounds like you bagged yourself a bargain Bart - nice one

[DavidTrap (David)]

The genuine Mac SSDs are expensive.

I just bought a MacBook Pro and the 512Gb SSD was an additional $1150. For $750 I can buy a aftermarket 480Gb SSD and I get to keep the original 750Gb 2.5 inch HDD which can be put in an external enclosure as a backup drive (it is removed if you buy the genuine Mac SSD).

I haven't done this yet, but I did buy 16Gb of RAM from the same supplier for the same price as Apple wanted for 8Gb.

To my knowledge, RAM and HDD are user serviceable parts on a Mac - Apple provide instuctions on the net as to how to do it.

You can't upgrade the RAM on a MacBook air as it is soldered to the main board.

DT

[bartman (Bart)]

Originally Posted by Octane

Welcome to the... clique!

H

Thanks H!

Originally Posted by Poita

Yeah, OSX flies with a SSD.

If you want to upgrade to lion I'd recommend maxing out the RAM.
MBPs are very finicky with the RAM they will accept, so a lot of junkier RAM won't work with them, or will be flakey.
If you do upgrade I'd recommend getting the RAM from crucial.com, it really just works and is rock-solid and guaranteed to work in the MBP.

Nice score, the firewire is handy too.

Yeah I will be looking at upgrading the RAM to 8GB. The shop said they could do it for $160....not sure what brand. I'm guessing CS5 could do with all the ram it can get.....but thats later down the track cause it expensive....

Originally Posted by Omaroo

Good stuff Bart. Enjoy. Welcome to the light side.

Amazing that this bloke who was going to chuck it because of a simple bum drive. Loopy.

Thanks Chris....I am enjoying.....
That bloke didn't have much patience, but has money....so he'll just buy a new one......I'm guessing.

Thanks to all the other response too!
Just found another great trick on youtube. You can highlight text on a web page, drag it to the desktop and it becomes a text document! None of this copy, open note pad, paste and then save! How easy is that!!!!!

BTW anyone bought one of those MagicMouse's?
They seem pretty cool.
Oh and AppleTV.....and a Time Capsule?

Cheers
Bartman

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

You'll be finding tricks like this for months Bart. Magic Mouse is first class, so get one if you prefer mice to a trackpad for fine work. It has full gesture control on its top touch surface. Get the other stuff too... Then you'll find how it all works as a system.

[silv (Annette)]

congrats! what a bargain!!!!

The Magic Trackpad has its merits. But I find it harder, slower to navigate on application buttons on than with a real mouse.
Dragging a slider for example is a real show stopper ...
And with CS5 you will want to have 8GB, yes. I have no experience with SSD and possibly increased application performance - but I have seen CS5 on 4GB with normal HDD and Snow Leopard and it's really more like "Slow" Leopard...

Congrats again

[bartman (Bart)]

Thanks Silv!
Well I did get the 8GB ram and the appleTV and the Magic Mouse!
Loving the new Toys!
Ive installed a few little apps just to see how well it handles etc......so much easier than the PC!
I'm eying off a Mac Pro with the dual Xeon 6 cores with SSD's, 32GB ram, 2x ACD's, 2x 1TB drives etc etc heheheheheheheheheheh
$11k......which is a far cry from my little bargain

Any tips on any apps or must do's would be very welcome!

Cheers
Bartman

[silv (Annette)]

tipps?
uhm, use Time Machine, the built-in backup software (!!!!!!)
keep the installation files of all your installed apps somewhere safe.
if an app GUI misses a setting in the preferences window, it's possible that that property can be set using the command line.
for example, the Mail.app always expands email attachments into the body instead of just adding an attachment icon. And there's no tick box for that behavior in the preferences.
google "defaults write" and the property in question - in this case
- Mail attachments body -
brings up how to set this particular property in command line using the defaults write command.

googling names of Windows programs with the words "for mac" usually gives results on alternatives.
if you still need to run Windows programs you can do so by running Windows either from a separate partition using the /Applications/Utilities/Boot Camp Assistant to set that up-
or by running a virtual Windows machine in an app called "Virtual Box" (freeware).

finally the battery: older macbook models require battery callibration once a month to prolong battery life. here's how to find out whether your battery model needs that and how to callibrate the battery: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490

It's great to read how happy you are with your Mac!
I became a true believer when I first saw Time Machine during a file restore. SOOOO beautiful!
On a Mac, things not only "just work" and with ease of use - but with a beauty, too.