Mac
The virtue and disadvantage of owning a jalopy
By Peter CohenJanuary 22, 2010, 5:28 am PT
With Apple on the cusp of making a major product announcement next week, I’ve had to reevaluate plans to fix up a beloved system in my arsenal that’s showing its age, badly.
Last November I made a switch from a 17-inch MacBook Pro to a 13-inch MacBook. I picked one up after Apple announced the new “unibody” MacBook with a 2.26GHz processor, and haven’t looked back. But the 17-inch model is still part of my life. How much longer it will be, though, is anyone’s bet.
Since I added the petite MacBook to my Mac menagerie, the 17-inch MacBook Pro has been sidelined. It’s gone from the role of daily driver – my one computer that I did almost everything on, from checking e-mail to writing stories, playing games and so on – to an auxiliary role as my wife’s occasional laptop. She’d been asking for one for a while, so it made sense. But how much longer it’ll be able to fill that role is anyone’s guess.
It isn’t a matter of forced obsolescence or caprice. The 17-inch MacBook Pro is still a very capable machine that I’ve kept up to date with Snow Leopard and the latest updates to software applications I use regularly. But it’s showing its age, badly.
After three years of daily use – some would say abuse – the 17-inch MacBook Pro’s case is bent, badly enough that it no longer latches correctly and the optical drive is all but useless – trying to get an optical disc in or out would cause damage. The display housing is a more serious problem, though. A few weeks ago a fissure opened up in the lower right hand corner of the display bezel, and now I see the upper and lower halves of the display housing are starting to separate.
I’ve called around to a few different places and the cost of repair isn’t cheap. Case parts for that model are extraordinarily expensive; rebuilding the exterior of the MacBook Pro will exceed its resale value dramatically.
In fact, I can go to a reseller of used Mac equipped for a refurbished, already-rebuilt MacBook Pro of similar vintage to this model for less money than repairing this one will cost. And if I wanted to spend a few hundred dollars more, I could buy a much newer refurbished 17-inch MacBook Pro from Apple, and get a full warranty (and AppleCare to boot).
We may pay a premium on parts like these because we’re Mac users, but just as a point of comparison I decided to look into what it would cost to repair an equivalent PC laptop of similar vintage, and what I’ve discovered is that the grass is no greener in the neighbor’s yard.
Laptops, regardless of whether they’re PC or Macintosh, depreciate quickly, and unlike PC desktop machines, which feature many interchangeable components you can buy inexpensively, a commodity market doesn’t really exist for generic PC laptop gear. PC laptop manufacturers don’t produce a large quantity of replacement parts, and it’s typically cheaper and more cost-effective in the long run to simply replace the system all together than it is to fix it. So this is one case where, despite what some of my Windows-using friends would have me think, things aren’t that much better for them.
We live in a disposable consumer culture, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s still difficult for someone like me who holds value to something that works. Which is also why I’m still limping along with an HP LaserJet 5MP networked using an Ethernet to AppleTalk bridge, despite the fact that I need to route it through a Mac that hasn’t been upgraded to Snow Leopard yet.
So if nothing else it’s given me an additional reason to pay attention to Apple’s big product announcement next week, and hope that whatever it is, it’ll be worthwhile for me to invest in that product rather than getting the 17-inch fixed up.
And as far as the 17-inch I already own? Well, hopefully bailing wire and duct tape will hold it together for just a little longer. After that? Maybe it’ll become a project machine, like that Windows PC I’ve been putting together. Since 2008.
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Discussion
12 comments so far
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I've got my QuickSilver G4 sitting on the floor in my office. The fan in the power supply burned out, so it has an external one strapped to the outside. The on board ethernet port has been fried for as long as I can remember. The superdrive has been scavenged to an external case for my current computer. The computer overheats unless the case is opened and laid out flat while running.But I still can't bring myself to get rid of it.
Giving up on a former workhorse is hard.
-
As soon as the AppleCare ran out on our iBook G4 I pretty much resigned myself to the fact that it's now living on borrowed time. Happy to say my wife is still using that 6 yr old laptop as her main machine …but the time is near.
-
It's not a question of a disposable culture, it's basic physics and mechanics.
Parts on a laptop have to be small and light, which means fragile. They also have to withstand being moved about constantly. This means design compromises. A soldered connection is much smaller and more durable than a screw with the appropriate socket or nut.
Laptops used to have more modular parts. I recently picked up my beloved old 1400cs, and was shocked by how bulky and heavy it was. Unless you want to go back to the days of bricks, this is the price we pay.
One day, someone will design a smaller and more durable removable connection. The fact still remains, however, that ya canna change the laws of physics.
-
Ebay was always a solid place to unload macs for parts, there may be people out there with cases that are fine but the screen itself is bad or need internal components. Don't throw it away, someone might need its kidney!
-
I pretty much start looking for a replacement laptop about 4-5 months before the 3-year AppleCare warranty runs out. Having a little of the AppleCare warranty left increases the resale value of the laptop. Anyone who buys it from me can know that they have several months to get it repaired if something isn't quite right–though as far as I know, the last 3 laptops I resold were in near perfect condition.
Given the current pace of change in the computer industry, a 2.5 year replacement cycle seems to work well. And my average cost for a new Mac laptop has been steadily declining for the last decade.
-
My Pismo still works fine!
-
eBay for parts.. but I can hardly believe you have written a piece about your misuse/abuse of such a venerable machine! As soon as any physical (read: accidental) damage occurs, I would be straight on the phone to my insurance co.. (Written on a powerbook G4 in pristine (and still very capable) condition)!
-
As a mac user for the last 7 years, I have certainly not developed any kind of personal affinity with my current macs. I simply use them as work tools. I made the switch from windoze because I could see a distinct advantage, an increase in productivity that was too hard to ignore. Simple as that.
If the pendulum was to shift in the opposite direction, I'd switch camps in a heartbeat, seeing as I am ready to replace my G5 work station. Heartless? Not really. My profit motive is to do more with my business than my heart.
Mind you, from what I can see in regards to the current Apple / Microsoft evolution, you can keep on dressing up a sow's ear, but it will continue to look (and feel) like a very hard, green Apple.
-
Holy cow! Just how rough are you on your equipment? My 12" PB G4 is over six years old, but still perfectly functional. Yeah, it has some scuffs and scrapes (and frankly I couldn't care less about some cosmetic blemishes – nothing lasts forever and I do buy my equipment to use it) but tweaking the case to the point where the CD drive doesn't work?
It seems to me it would be cheaper to just get in the habit of handling your gear better. It would last longer naturally 
-
Asanté!
I'm going through something of the same amount of regret at not having a clear use for equipment that's about to be replaced. My old HP LaserJet 4M was chugging along fine over the old Asanté Ethernet/AppleTalk until it blew a part that its diagnostics claimed would cost $45 to replace… if that indeed was all that was wrong. It was an excuse to look at possibly-less-durable current printer models, among which I found our much cheaper HP 1320tn, which has native Ethernet and duplexing and allows us to save a bit of paper. The old printer is still sitting around gathering dust, while I put off a decision of whether to Freecycle it to some ambitious tinkerer, trash it, or try to repair the thing before donating it to an underfunded public school.
My five-year-old dual-2GHz G5 PowerMac will be another matter once the new Mac Pro towers are announced this year. I'd need to learn a bit about how to set it up as a backup server for my wife and I (if indeed we could conveniently make use of such a thing within a cramped apartment), and I'm almost as likely to find a friend who needs a solid machine upon which to do work that doesn't require demanding graphics or HD video.
-
Peter, I miss hearing you talk about Mac News on Wednesday nights, so I find myself motivated to read your articles more. This article was interesting. It seems like laptop users, who make their notebook their only and principal computer, find the machine wares out quicker, internally and externally. I use a desktop for my principal machine. Since the laptop gets used during the few times during the year that I travel, it does not suffer too much.
I’m still using my last revision 15″ Powerbook G4. I just swapped out my 100 GB Seagate internal ATA drive for a 320 GB Western Digital internal mobile drive. It will probably be the last drive I put in this machine, since I’m over due for getting an Intel-Mac laptop. I acquired an ‘07 Quad-Core Mac Pro, last summer. Adobe CS4 works fine on the PowerPC-Mac laptop and the Intel-Mac Desktop.
-
Apple internal corporate documents that surfaced indicate their plans for a 3 year window where devoted Apple users will continue to purchase NEW Apple computers. Apples Corporate will continue to manipulate sales and therefore warrantees around this 3 year window. All future Apple products will be designed and marketed along these predetermined time spans.
Apple wants loyal customers. Apple wants loyal customers to buy a new computer at LEAST every 3 years. Therefore the law has come down from on high.
Post a comment
The virtue and disadvantage of owning a jalopy
By Peter CohenJanuary 22, 2010, 5:28 am PT
With Apple on the cusp of making a major product announcement next week, I’ve had to reevaluate plans to fix up a beloved system in my arsenal that’s showing its age, badly.
Last November I made a switch from a 17-inch MacBook Pro to a 13-inch MacBook. I picked one up after Apple announced the new “unibody” MacBook with a 2.26GHz processor, and haven’t looked back. But the 17-inch model is still part of my life. How much longer it will be, though, is anyone’s bet.
Since I added the petite MacBook to my Mac menagerie, the 17-inch MacBook Pro has been sidelined. It’s gone from the role of daily driver – my one computer that I did almost everything on, from checking e-mail to writing stories, playing games and so on – to an auxiliary role as my wife’s occasional laptop. She’d been asking for one for a while, so it made sense. But how much longer it’ll be able to fill that role is anyone’s guess.
It isn’t a matter of forced obsolescence or caprice. The 17-inch MacBook Pro is still a very capable machine that I’ve kept up to date with Snow Leopard and the latest updates to software applications I use regularly. But it’s showing its age, badly.
After three years of daily use – some would say abuse – the 17-inch MacBook Pro’s case is bent, badly enough that it no longer latches correctly and the optical drive is all but useless – trying to get an optical disc in or out would cause damage. The display housing is a more serious problem, though. A few weeks ago a fissure opened up in the lower right hand corner of the display bezel, and now I see the upper and lower halves of the display housing are starting to separate.
I’ve called around to a few different places and the cost of repair isn’t cheap. Case parts for that model are extraordinarily expensive; rebuilding the exterior of the MacBook Pro will exceed its resale value dramatically.
In fact, I can go to a reseller of used Mac equipped for a refurbished, already-rebuilt MacBook Pro of similar vintage to this model for less money than repairing this one will cost. And if I wanted to spend a few hundred dollars more, I could buy a much newer refurbished 17-inch MacBook Pro from Apple, and get a full warranty (and AppleCare to boot).
We may pay a premium on parts like these because we’re Mac users, but just as a point of comparison I decided to look into what it would cost to repair an equivalent PC laptop of similar vintage, and what I’ve discovered is that the grass is no greener in the neighbor’s yard.
Laptops, regardless of whether they’re PC or Macintosh, depreciate quickly, and unlike PC desktop machines, which feature many interchangeable components you can buy inexpensively, a commodity market doesn’t really exist for generic PC laptop gear. PC laptop manufacturers don’t produce a large quantity of replacement parts, and it’s typically cheaper and more cost-effective in the long run to simply replace the system all together than it is to fix it. So this is one case where, despite what some of my Windows-using friends would have me think, things aren’t that much better for them.
We live in a disposable consumer culture, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s still difficult for someone like me who holds value to something that works. Which is also why I’m still limping along with an HP LaserJet 5MP networked using an Ethernet to AppleTalk bridge, despite the fact that I need to route it through a Mac that hasn’t been upgraded to Snow Leopard yet.
So if nothing else it’s given me an additional reason to pay attention to Apple’s big product announcement next week, and hope that whatever it is, it’ll be worthwhile for me to invest in that product rather than getting the 17-inch fixed up.
And as far as the 17-inch I already own? Well, hopefully bailing wire and duct tape will hold it together for just a little longer. After that? Maybe it’ll become a project machine, like that Windows PC I’ve been putting together. Since 2008.
Email This Post
⋅ Print This Post
⋅ Post a comment
Discussion 12 comments so far
-
I've got my QuickSilver G4 sitting on the floor in my office. The fan in the power supply burned out, so it has an external one strapped to the outside. The on board ethernet port has been fried for as long as I can remember. The superdrive has been scavenged to an external case for my current computer. The computer overheats unless the case is opened and laid out flat while running.But I still can't bring myself to get rid of it.
Giving up on a former workhorse is hard.
-
As soon as the AppleCare ran out on our iBook G4 I pretty much resigned myself to the fact that it's now living on borrowed time. Happy to say my wife is still using that 6 yr old laptop as her main machine …but the time is near.
-
It's not a question of a disposable culture, it's basic physics and mechanics.
Parts on a laptop have to be small and light, which means fragile. They also have to withstand being moved about constantly. This means design compromises. A soldered connection is much smaller and more durable than a screw with the appropriate socket or nut.
Laptops used to have more modular parts. I recently picked up my beloved old 1400cs, and was shocked by how bulky and heavy it was. Unless you want to go back to the days of bricks, this is the price we pay.
One day, someone will design a smaller and more durable removable connection. The fact still remains, however, that ya canna change the laws of physics.
-
Ebay was always a solid place to unload macs for parts, there may be people out there with cases that are fine but the screen itself is bad or need internal components. Don't throw it away, someone might need its kidney!
-
I pretty much start looking for a replacement laptop about 4-5 months before the 3-year AppleCare warranty runs out. Having a little of the AppleCare warranty left increases the resale value of the laptop. Anyone who buys it from me can know that they have several months to get it repaired if something isn't quite right–though as far as I know, the last 3 laptops I resold were in near perfect condition.
Given the current pace of change in the computer industry, a 2.5 year replacement cycle seems to work well. And my average cost for a new Mac laptop has been steadily declining for the last decade.
-
My Pismo still works fine!
-
eBay for parts.. but I can hardly believe you have written a piece about your misuse/abuse of such a venerable machine! As soon as any physical (read: accidental) damage occurs, I would be straight on the phone to my insurance co.. (Written on a powerbook G4 in pristine (and still very capable) condition)!
-
As a mac user for the last 7 years, I have certainly not developed any kind of personal affinity with my current macs. I simply use them as work tools. I made the switch from windoze because I could see a distinct advantage, an increase in productivity that was too hard to ignore. Simple as that.
If the pendulum was to shift in the opposite direction, I'd switch camps in a heartbeat, seeing as I am ready to replace my G5 work station. Heartless? Not really. My profit motive is to do more with my business than my heart.
Mind you, from what I can see in regards to the current Apple / Microsoft evolution, you can keep on dressing up a sow's ear, but it will continue to look (and feel) like a very hard, green Apple.
-
Holy cow! Just how rough are you on your equipment? My 12" PB G4 is over six years old, but still perfectly functional. Yeah, it has some scuffs and scrapes (and frankly I couldn't care less about some cosmetic blemishes – nothing lasts forever and I do buy my equipment to use it) but tweaking the case to the point where the CD drive doesn't work?
It seems to me it would be cheaper to just get in the habit of handling your gear better. It would last longer naturally
-
Asanté!
I'm going through something of the same amount of regret at not having a clear use for equipment that's about to be replaced. My old HP LaserJet 4M was chugging along fine over the old Asanté Ethernet/AppleTalk until it blew a part that its diagnostics claimed would cost $45 to replace… if that indeed was all that was wrong. It was an excuse to look at possibly-less-durable current printer models, among which I found our much cheaper HP 1320tn, which has native Ethernet and duplexing and allows us to save a bit of paper. The old printer is still sitting around gathering dust, while I put off a decision of whether to Freecycle it to some ambitious tinkerer, trash it, or try to repair the thing before donating it to an underfunded public school.
My five-year-old dual-2GHz G5 PowerMac will be another matter once the new Mac Pro towers are announced this year. I'd need to learn a bit about how to set it up as a backup server for my wife and I (if indeed we could conveniently make use of such a thing within a cramped apartment), and I'm almost as likely to find a friend who needs a solid machine upon which to do work that doesn't require demanding graphics or HD video.
-
Peter, I miss hearing you talk about Mac News on Wednesday nights, so I find myself motivated to read your articles more. This article was interesting. It seems like laptop users, who make their notebook their only and principal computer, find the machine wares out quicker, internally and externally. I use a desktop for my principal machine. Since the laptop gets used during the few times during the year that I travel, it does not suffer too much.
I’m still using my last revision 15″ Powerbook G4. I just swapped out my 100 GB Seagate internal ATA drive for a 320 GB Western Digital internal mobile drive. It will probably be the last drive I put in this machine, since I’m over due for getting an Intel-Mac laptop. I acquired an ‘07 Quad-Core Mac Pro, last summer. Adobe CS4 works fine on the PowerPC-Mac laptop and the Intel-Mac Desktop.
-
Apple internal corporate documents that surfaced indicate their plans for a 3 year window where devoted Apple users will continue to purchase NEW Apple computers. Apples Corporate will continue to manipulate sales and therefore warrantees around this 3 year window. All future Apple products will be designed and marketed along these predetermined time spans.
Apple wants loyal customers. Apple wants loyal customers to buy a new computer at LEAST every 3 years. Therefore the law has come down from on high.
Post a comment