Laptop life expectancy?

As in the MacBook Air, the laptop’s memory is soldered to the logic board, eliminating any later RAM upgrade. Customers must order the Pro with the exact amount of memory they desire, and pay Apple’s high prices.
Although the MacBook Pro with Retina display comes equipped with 8GB of RAM standard, boosting that to 16GB at the time of purchase adds another $200 to the already=steep $2,199 sticker price of the base model.

For once I agree with some part of mikewsmith’s relentless Apple-hating. This is a completely dick-ish move from them.

Not on mine you can’t!
Some yes, but not all.

You sure it’s the Core2Duo, not the CoreDuo?

If you think they are not expandable enough or too expensive at £1800-£2200 buy something cheaper. There must be 100’s of laptops out there to choose from.

You sure it’s the Core2Duo, not the CoreDuo?

100% positive. This was discussed in a Macbook thread a year or more back. Whenever ML came out.

Off the top of my head, only MacBooks of model 4.1 or 4.2 and later can be updated with Mountain Lion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook#Model_specifications

edit: so my 5.5yr old laptop was already totally obsoleted by Apple a year ago, and the OS before that had features missing (although most of those were probably due to conventional touchpad, and not multitouch, etc.)
But it’ll happily run a full-on 64-bit bleeding edge Linux

andytherocketeer – Member

100% positive.

As am I, c2d with Santa Rosa mobo chipset.

Eer, Andy, if you’re giving that machine away I’d love it, thanks. Where are you based?

@andy, @mike, @molgrips – thanks for the debate, interesting.

I’ve been using computers for 35 years since I built my first one with a soldering iron. I am so glad Microsoft has basically died and that buying Apple makes sense now. I do agree that it’s the downloading of too many programmes that causes Windows machines to hang but Microsoft were always happy with that as it encouraged people to buy another machine which meant they got another fee.

No the 6 year old white MacBook cannot upgrade to latest iOS which is a pity but I can live with that – it still works. My 2009 Mac Mini will be able to take Maverick when it comes out.

The soldered in memory for MacBook and Air is a bit of a concern but as I’ve posted here before I am sure you can still replace it’s just a bit more tricky, I mean Apple aren’t going to bin the whole machine for a warranty claim due to faulty memory / HDD are they. Soldering can be undone, well it could be back in the 70’s 😳

I am so glad Microsoft has basically died

Wot?

Still by far and away the biggest OS maker and the most used, and since Windows 7 generally considered to be just as good as Apple.

Buying Apple only makes sense if you are both loaded and useless with tech 🙂

Soldering can be undone, well it could be back in the 70’s

Yeah not any more.

Molgrips – Yes, the big problem with Windows is what people do to it without realising. They click ‘yes’ to install everything and everything they buy comes with crappy software that they install because they bought the thing, so it gets bogged down. It’s not necessarily the users’ fault, but a bit of awareness helps massively.

Jambalaya – I do agree that it’s the downloading of too many programmes that causes Windows machines to hang but Microsoft were always happy with that as it encouraged people to buy another machine which meant they got another fee.

Is there a general rule of thumb to avoiding this (other than never downloading anything obviously)? I’ve an old Acer and whilst mechanically its okay, operationally its creaky as you like and takes about 45 mins to start up and struggles to open Word, Excel etc or browse the net.

We’ve got a nice HP atm so I want to try and avoid a similar fate befalling it!

Wouldn’t worry about soldered RAM tbh. Just spec it well initially.

Non-replaceable battery would be a deal breaker for me, or limit the max justifiable spend to something like €350.

User replaceable SSD is nice to have, so long as it’s a readily available industry standard. But that’s only applicable if the lappy and battery and OS support lets it run for 5+ years. All or nothing really.

Not on mine you can’t!
Some yes, but not all.

The reason isn’t that “apple have prevented you”, it’s that it’s got a 32bit UEFI “bios” (not really a bios but we’ll let that slide…) you need a 64bit version for the newer OS. There was one (short) generation of 64bit core2s with 32bit firmware before they moved on.

So there is a technical reason for it, not an arbitrary decision.

Yes, they probably could have sorted a 32bit bootloader for their newer kernel etc… but at somepoint maintaining backwards compatability just isn’t worth it when you want to make things more modern, and move on.

I mean taken to its extreme you might end up with windows! 😮 😉

As for laptop life expectancy – I generally have them 3 years (macs) then sell them on and they do many more. High end work machines last a long time too. Various family have cheapy dells etc – they don’t last as long. But then they cost a lot less! There’s about a factor of 10 between a cheap and expensive laptop, there’s a fair quality/performance spectrum! Not a direct tradeoff (there’s a flattening curve of diminishing returns for sure) but you do get what you pay for in general.

Buying Apple only makes sense if you are both loaded and useless with tech

Or not loaded, but excellent with tech? As it’s always made sense for me, since student days…

Not aggressively pro-apple BTW, these days I use windows more, and linux too, I just like arguing on the internet, especially when I know I’m right 😉

Andy – hellooooooo! That Black Macbook – did I hear you say you’d give it away with no HDD? Or not – maybe I misunderstood?

I could really do with an Apple laptop – I could run a couple of copies of my older Apple software on it [Adobe stuff] in lectures, and I don’t hold up much hope for doing it with Chrome Remote Desktop from the Chromebook to the PC, which was plan b !

Tend to keep my personal ones for 3-4 years and usually just replace them if something cheap and reasonable comes along, work laptops every 12-16 months though.
As a rule I try to rebuild mine every 12 months i.e. full re-installation of the OS, then slowly and surely start to re-install software as I need it over the next 12 months, then repeat until I get a new one.

Not giving it away. Still gets used but permanently plugged in, therefore no longer a laptop, and mostly not running OSX (64 bit Fedora on that one at the moment IIRC, despite it not being fully 64 bit in Apples eyes).

More of a not so subtle way of saying that a 4yr old Macbook that was about to become obsolete is just as worthless and non-functional as a 4 year old Tosh or 4 year old Dell or HP or…

A 1-2 yr old Mac might be worth more 2nd hand than a 1-2yr old plasticky Windows lappy though.

Is there a general rule of thumb to avoiding this (other than never downloading anything obviously)? I’ve an old Acer and whilst mechanically its okay, operationally its creaky as you like and takes about 45 mins to start up and struggles to open Word, Excel etc or browse the net.

We’ve got a nice HP atm so I want to try and avoid a similar fate befalling it!

Keep it clean and tidy, don’t download more junk onto it than you need. Something like CCleaner can help with making sure that you don’t have too many “Helpful” little add-ons to programs starting at boot and continually running in the background for no good reason.

Keep your data backed up.

Every-so-whenever-you-need-to re-image the laptop/pc with the recovery partition, un-install any programs from the original image that you don’t use and put your data and programs back on the laptop.

It’ll fly.

EDIT: for backing up the machine in its current state – Acronis TrueImage works well and is pretty simple to use. Taking a full image of the PC means that you can always return it to the current state if things go wrong. You will need an external drive for the backup.

At home I use a 6.5 year old Lenovo ThinkPad T60. The ThinkPad series are (or at least were) magnesium cased and pretty tough. On the second battery now and it’s a bit slow, but I’m sure a re-build would sort it out as I have not done that for a few years. Physically it just keeps ticking on and the case/hinges etc are fine.

despite it not being fully 64 bit in Apples eyes

To be pedantic on the internet (another hobby), it’s not fully 64bit in *anyone’s* eyes.

The versions of OSX you *can* run have 64bit kernels. As does the version of linux you run.

There’s a load of bootloader nonsense/detail I could go into now, but I won’t. Some light googling will serve the interested reader 😉

BTW I think apple cocked up, they went to UEFI too early almost, by the time anyone else did it was all UEFI_64 so they ended up changing too, hence your problem.

More of a not so subtle way of saying that a 4yr old Macbook that was about to become obsolete is just as worthless and non-functional

Does it just suddenly stop working when a new version of the operating system comes out then? I bet there’s plenty of people still happily using XP.

Buying Apple only makes sense if you are both loaded and useless with tech

Nice one trollgrips – tell that to all the IT consultants at the conference I photographed last year. MacBook Airs were mandatory.

@molgrips – MS is surviving on the still substantial Office revenues from business users but these will dry up as people switch to other free applications (if nothing else to openoffice). Gates himself recently said MS will survive and prosper as people “need Office”, I think he’s wrong. MS is spending the Office revenues on acquisitions to try and stay relevant (eg Skype, Nokia). MS has prospered on Gate’s genius in getting IBM to sign an exclusive deal for DOS but it’s never been a technology lead company and other more creative companies are just leaving it for dead. MS is irrelevant in my personal life now and increasingly so at work. I don’t think I’m alone.

On cost of Apple if you price in the re-sale value of the product (be that phone, computer, tablet) 2-4 years on I’d say Apple products can actually be cheaper.

I’d have thought a laptop only becomes obsolete when it’s os is no longer supported, hence become subject to vulnerabilities which will no longer be patched by the supplier.

My white MacBook is certain.y not obsolete at 5 years old, despite not being able to officially run mountain lion.
Most all other mac software will run, unless precluded by hardware, though I’ll no longer be able to run the latest developer tools once Mavericks is released.

when i was on the road Id’d get through one every 2 years roughly but then i’m something of an extreme user. £800+ sony was my ball park. I once bought a cheaper one (toshiba i think), got it home, un-packed it, pressed one key, saw it bend then promptly took it back.

Latest sony was a bit too big and they have gone a bit plascticky but i bought it because it had a full HD screen which apples did not.

I now have a work supplied MBP but if i was buying again i would buy a business oriented Lenovo machine as they seem well built (we have 40 of them on our hire fleet). most laptops are now designed with the home user in mind and are never meant to leave the house.

my home macbook pro is now 4.5 years old, used all the time and despite a battering (stood on at a party, dropped several times) is still working just fine.

In the same period I’ve had 4 work laptops (one Lenovo at the end of its service life which worked fine but had required a new battery at least once a year for 3 years), two dells (one with a HDD failure, another with a motherboard failure) and one HP which in 18 months has now been rebuilt several times due to an O/S corruption, blue screening and the rest of the time windows being as reliable as an Alfa Romeo on a wet day.

Ironically the work laptops all cost more (with corporate discount) than my macbook pro, weighed more and weren’t ergonomically designed… HP for example requires you to press FN and the cursor to page up or down… and I’ve never got to grips with the point stick mouse.

@Andy – OK dude – had to ask – stoodent days looming 🙂