Thread: Cheap Apple
View Single Post
  #20  
Old November 13th 17, 10:58 PM posted to rec.photo.digital
Alan Browne
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 12,640
Default Cheap Apple

On 2017-11-13 16:39, nospam wrote:
In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

I'm tempted to pick up one of those MacBooks at $149 just to see what
the Mac thing is like, but I probably won't. Dunno what I'd do with a
second laptop.

That is a pretty good price for a refurbished MacBook, (note; Macbook,
not
MacBookPro) and could make for a budget on-the-road machine. It could do
with
a bit more RAM, and perhaps an SSD upgrade. So spend another $200 and you
would have your budget Mac.

considering how old it is, it's not a pretty good price at all.

although adding memory and ssd would help (and very easy to do), it's
wasted money for something that old.

Perhaps $150 is a bit steep in that market.

very steep for something that old.

But the laptop will still
be fine for most general use that isn't CPU intensive. That includes
photo editing, office apps, mail, web, video watching, etc.

small photos and videos, perhaps, but for 1080p and/or h.265, it's
going to fall flat.


No issue for 1080 - used to do that with my SO's prior MBA w/o issue and
it was slow.


there absolutely is an issue with 1080p.

both my '08 and '09 macbook pros drop frames with 1080p, and the latter
has an ssd.


Sucks to be you - did same with aforementioned MBA w/o issue. SSD is
irrelevant since the HD has way more that enough BW to deliver the content.

no issue on more recent macs.

h.265 is rare in most respects.


nope. it's actually rather common, and that's even before it became the
default format for iphones.


And yet one has no issue finding most content in 264 on the web and
elsewhere. Default â‰* required. I haven't to date been unable to view a
video because it was .265. True non issue.

I sold an iMac (late 2007 v.) with a 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo with 6 GB of
RAM. The family that bought it still use it daily and w/o complaint.
I'm not sure what OS it is at. I sold it to them with Mavericks installed.

it's probably still on mavericks, and also quite a bit faster than the
macbook.


Not really. The iMac was a 2007 model. If the Macbook quoted is
2009/2010 then it has a pretty good processor.


a core 2 duo of unspecified speed, which can be anywhere from 2-2.4
ghz.


Yep, fine for general use. 2010 is 2.4 actually.


more than likely it's on the slower end, otherwise the store would have
listed the cpu speed as well as jacked their price even more. the
macbook also has a slow laptop drive.

your 2007 imac had 2.8 ghz core 2 duo processor (already faster), more
memory, a much faster desktop drive and a faster gpu.

so yes, it was faster.


Not enough to matter for general purpose use.

The notebook mentioned is 4 GB. My iMac had 6 (at the end - started at 2).

If I were to invest in improving that laptop at all it would be for the
SSD first and the RAM only possibly depending on the configuration as sold.

at which point, it becomes not such a good deal.


It's more than fine for someone who is "Mac curious".


it's not representative of what a modern mac can do. for example,


It doesn't have to be for someone who simply wants to see what OS X is
all about. If one likes that experience then sell it off and get the
real thing.

there's no handoff & continuity. the display is also not very good as
well as being pre-retina.


So what? My 2012 iMac (this one) is not retina either. Doesn't stop me
from doing anything I need to do.


buying something cheap, only to spend money on it to make it less sucky
is not a good idea.


No need to spend more on it. Those are just possibilities if one wanted
to keep the thing.

--
"My Twitter has become so powerful that
I can actually make my enemies tell the truth."
...Donald Trump