Mac Laptop Under $700

Finding trustworthy deals on used Mac laptops can be daunting because tons of outlets on Amazon.com and similar massive retainers allow sellers to list things as "renewed" or "refurbished".

Unless these independent sellers are verified and certified by these large stores, I would not trust putting hundreds of hard earned dollars into a computer that will not be guaranteed for a reasonable period of time.

Mac of All Trades has been around for years and they provide a one year warranty on the computers they sell. The only catch is that the customer is responsible for paying shipping to get the item repaired.

"The MacBook Pro Retina Series has RAM that is soldered to the Motherboard."  So what ever Retina model you choose, make sure it has enough RAM for whatever you plan to use this computer for.  Go for 16GB of RAM if at all possible, as newer software and operating systems use more and more ram.  For anything with photo, video, music, or graphics creation, you're going to want more RAM so that your laptop doesn't slow down when running a few programs.

Some current listings on Mac of All Trades for budget laptops

iFixIt Guides for MacBook Pro 13" laptops (to research in advance which models can have the RAM upgraded without serious tools or soldering

Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (Glossy) 2.5GHz Core i5 (Mid 2012) MD101LL/A - Very Good Condition
13.3-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen TFT display, 1280x800 resolution
2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor
4.0GB (2x2.0GB) PC3-12800 (1600MHz) DDR3L SO-DIMM upgradeable to 16.0GB
500GB Serial ATA hard disk drive @ 5400RPM
$479.00

Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch 2.6GHz Core i5 (Retina, Mid 2014) MGX72LL/A - Very Good Condition
13-inch LED-backlit Retina display with IPS technology; 2560x1600 resolution
2.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz
16.0GB PC3-12800 (1600MHz) DDR3L on-board memory
128GB built-in Flash Storage (not very much storage if you want to keep music or photos directly)
$699.00

Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch 2.8GHz Core i7 (Retina, Late 2013) ME866LL/A 4 - Good Condition
13-inch LED-backlit Retina display with IPS technology; 2560x1600 resolution
2.8GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz
16.0GB PC3-12800 (1600MHz) DDR3L on-board memory
512GB built-in Flash Storage
$699.00

Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch 2.6GHz Core i5 (Retina, Late 2013) ME865LL/A - Very Good Condition
13-inch LED-backlit Retina display with IPS technology; 2560x1600 resolution
2.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz
16.0GB PC3-12800 (1600MHz) DDR3L on-board memory
128GB built-in Flash Storage
$629.00

Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch 2.7GHz Core i5 (Retina, Early 2015) MF839LL/A - Very Good Condition
13-inch LED-backlit Retina display with IPS technology; 2560x1600 resolution
2.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz
8.0GB PC3-14900 (1866MHz) DDR3L on-board memory
128GB built-in Flash Storage
$699.00
** RAM is not upgradable because it is built into the motherboard.  I would not chose this model unless you are only using it for lite web browsing, creating documents, and doing office or school work.

Specific repair guides to upgrade an older 2012-2015 MacBook Pro laptop

MacBook Pro 13" Retina Display Late 2012 SSD Replacement

MacBook Pro 13" Retina Display Late 2013 SSD Replacement

MacBook Pro 13" Retina Display Mid 2014 SSD Replacement

Upgrading a 2007 MacBook Pro to El Capitan - Getting More Life Out of an Ancient Mac

After throwing in a 256GB Solid State drive in my friend's 2010 MacBook Pro, it runs faster than when it was brand new.  Before installing the SSD drive earlier this year, her computer would take a long time to launch some programs and there was noticeable lag when running a few extra tabs in a Firefox.

Her Mac laptop, though 8 years old, now feels as zippy as something new.  Programs launch almost instantly and there's no noticeable lag when running different programs on the computer, including Lightroom and other things that require more resources than merely the Office suite.

I'm going to be upgrading my ancient 2007 MacBook Pro (model A1226). It's currently running 10.9.5 (Mavericks updated) and part of the research to do the upgrade is figuring out what OS will be best to put on an SSD and still get decent performance out of this laptop that would otherwise be far past it's usable life.

The latest OS that the 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo laptop supports is

The Mid/Late 2007 MacBook Pro is the oldest laptop model supported by El Capitan OS 10.11.  To be running a 2007 model laptop and be able to run a 2015 version OS is pretty impressive.  Although it may be better to run Yosemite if the RAM needs and system usage is significantly less.

Mavericks has been running like molasses on this 11 year old laptop, but hard drives don't even usually last that long, so it's definitely showing it's age as the system performance slows to a crawl.  If more software could run, I would love to continue running Mavericks on this Mac, but not even my web browsers can be updated anymore!

El Capitan requires 2GB of RAM.
Yosemite requires 2GB of RAM.

Yosemite requires a MacBook Pro Mid-2007 or newer.

Chrome for Mac requires Yosemite (10.10) or later.  Since web browsing on the go is one of the only things I use this aging mac for, I would need to at least use Yosemite to make sure that my browser not only updates, but is safe from security holes. 

Installing El Capitan will help extend the laptop's usable life for as long as Chrome updates are supported!  If I was installing a standard (slower) platter hard drive, I would not install El Capitan because of it's negative impacts on performance [see the Youtube video notes below].

Rundown of OS Versions:

OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - 28 August 2009
OS X 10.7 Lion (Barolo) - 20 July 2011
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (Zinfandel) - 25 July 2012
OS X 10.9 Mavericks (Cabernet) - 22 October 2013
OS X 10.10: Yosemite (Syrah) - 16 October 2014

OS X 10.11: El Capitan (Gala) - 30 September 2015
* MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)

 macOS 10.12: Sierra (Fuji) - 20 September 2016
* requires a MacBook Pro (Mid 2010 or newer)

macOS 10.13: High Sierra (Lobo) - 25 September 2017
* requires a MacBook Pro (Mid 2010 or newer)

 macOS 10.14: Mojave (Liberty) - 24 September 2018
* requires a MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 or newer)

macOS 10.15: Catalina - October 2019
* requires: MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 or newer)

Mac mini (Late 2012 or newer)

Hardware (Models) Required for Special Features:

AirDrop requires: MacBook Pro (2012 or newer)
AirPlay requires: MacBook Pro (Early 2011 or newer)

OS X El Capitan review: Mac upgrade that's as solid as a rock [MacWorld]

Yosemite vs. El Capitan [YouTube Video] 3:47
* El Capitan took about 14 seconds longer to get to the Desktop from boot up than its predecessor Yosemite.
* El Cap took 5-6 seconds longer to open MS Word and get to a new document.
* iTunes opened slightly faster on El Capitan.
*
(This test is done on a 2009/2010 macbook white upgraded to 4GB of ram)The creator of this video recommends sticking with Yosemite if you have a Mac older than 2010.

Yosemite vs. El Capitan - Is it faster? [YouTube video] 5:10 (October 1, 2015)
On a newer Mac with a solid state hard drive, El Capitan only takes about one second longer to reach the desktop than Yosemite.  The Geekbench score did go up on a newer MacBook Pro by simply upgrading to El Capitan.

Full specs of the Mid/Late 2007 MacBook Pro [EveryMac]

How to Upgrade to OS X El Capitan [Apple]


My 120 GB hard drive would run even slower if I had less than 7GB of free hard drive space because of the page file that we regularly get tapped when the system memory was not enough to handle web browsing and other tasks simultaneously.

Somehow the system applications are taking up 46GB of space, and I'm not really sure how this is possible, because the Adobe suite is the only larger software I run on this aging beast.  My best guess is that the space is used up by buried Premiere cache files from when I first started video editing.

How to Create a PC Desktop for Editing Video

 

Building a PC Desktop that can edit HD footage in real-time and export videos quickly requires of combination of:

• 4, 6, or 8 processor cores
• generous amounts of RAM memory (16GB+)
• a graphics card with a high amount of RAM that supports the Mercury Playback Engine for Adobe Premiere

Expect to spend $1,400 and up to configure a professional system, not including the monitor.  Check motherboard specs to see how upgradable your system will be for the future.

Learn more about system benchmarks and what hardward will affect what performace:

Premiere Pro Benchmark for CS5

Adobe Premiere CC, CS6, CS5.5 and CS5 Video Cards with CUDA Acceleration Mercury Playback
test results with AMD and Intel system configurations

A friend who was a freelance videographer and now works at a local TV station is able to edit HD footage in real time with these system specs:

AMD 8-Core Processor
16 GB RAM
128GB solid state drive
2TB 7,200 rpm drive
600w power supply
Nvidia 760 GTX graphics card

=====================

Here's a current custom desktop build from iBuyPower.com on 12/16/13 to match the pro video guy's specs.

Gamer Mage D295 system, $1,399 (sale price)

AMD FX-8320 CPU (8x 3.50GHz/8MB L3 Cache)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 - 2GB
(has 2 x DVI, 1 x HDMI , 1 x DisplayPort)
120 GB S510 ADATA SSD -- Read: 550MB/s, Write: 510MB/s
2 TB WD Black HARD DRIVE -- 64M Cache, 7200rpm, 6.0Gb/s
ASUS M5A97 R2.0 -- AMD 970
14x Blu-Ray] LG BLU-RAY Re-Writer, DVD±R/±RW Burner
600 watt power supply
Windows 8.1

ASUS M5A97 R2.0 -- AMD 970 motherboard specs:
up to 32GB of RAM
Memory Slots:  4 × DDR3 DIMM 240pin
6 x USB 2.0 ports; 2 x USB 3.0 ports
6 x 6GB/s (SATA-III)

upgrades for this system:
256 GB ADATA SX900 SSD -- Read: 550MB/s ; Write: 530MB/s - $85
ASRock 990FX Extreme9 -- AMD 990FX w/ 4x PCI-E 2.0 x16, 2x eSATA3, 8x USB 3.0 - $130
(only motherboard available that supports up to 64GB of RAM.)
AMD FX-8350 CPU (8x 4.00GHz/8MB L3 Cache) - $50

cheaper options for this system:
AMD Radeon R9 270X 2GB  - $84 less
1 x Daul Link DVI-I, 1 x HDMI, 1 x D-SUB Port

How to Setup Samsung ML-2010 printer in Mavericks

As of December 12th, 2013, Apple does not support the Samsung ML-2010 printer in OS X Mavericks.  You can print, however, using Parallels Desktop 8 or 9, see the solution at the bottom of this post.

Apple released this package on their website on November 14, 2013: Samsung Printer Drivers v2.6 for OS X, but the Samsung ML-2010 is unfortunately not included in this list of printers.

The Samsung ML-2010 worked perfectly in Leopard and Snow Leopard, but a driver is not available for Mavericks.

Upon checking the Samsung website. they offer a mac driver for the ML-2010, but it's only compatible up through OS X Lion (10.7).

When I tried to download this mac driver and install it, an alert message popped up saying "Samsung SPL2 Installer.app" can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer.  Oh well, Apple and/or Samsung tied some knots here.

So I thought I was stuck and that my Samsung ML-2010 printer was now incompatible since I had upgraded to Mavericks.

I remembered that I had Parallels Desktop on my mac, which can use Windows compatible peripherals.  Parallels Desktop 9 works on Mavericks and I was able to print from it after installing the "universal Samsung driver" on my virtual Windows XP machine from their support page for the Samsung ML-2010 printer.

It stinks that the ML-2010 printer is not natively supported in Mavericks right now, but maybe someday Samsung will release a new driver. Until then, just remember that Mavericks was free and that most OS X upgrades are $20-30 depending on when they are purchased. Parallels 8 is available for $20, so Apple's freebie offsets the $20 you will have to spend to use an old Samsung printer if you don't already have Parallels.

Parallels Desktop 9 is available on Amazon for $60, or you can get Parallels Desktop 8 for just $20 and the virtual Windows machines will still run in Mavericks, according to the Parallels blog.

If you buy Parallels Desktop 9 in a retail store, it costs $80.

PC vs. Mac video editing custom build desktop

 

Mac Pro configured on Apple's website on 10/10/13.

Intel PC configured on iBuyPower.com on 10/10/13.

6 Core Processor

16GB RAM

Radeon HD 7750 2GB video card

240GB SSD - primary hard drive

3 TB standard - secondary hard drive

Blu-Ray burner

DD-WRT takes our disposable Linksys router to 6 Days of Uptime

Our Linksys 310N router (version 1) has not been very reliable in the last few months.  In the past two weeks, it was getting progressively worse, to the point where my roommates and I were re-booting the router multiple times per day just to keep our wi-fi connections going.  We're not even regularly using any bandwidth-heavy applications or web services.

In comes DD-WRT to save the day.  After a pretty quick and painless install, DD-WRT has been running solidly for 6 days and we have not rebooted the router during that time.  It's been months, maybe even a year since the stock Linksys firmware was running that well on the router.

DD-WRT saved us having to spend $40-60 on a new router and throw away the router that we thought was ready to bite the dust.  Thanks to the geek community behind DD-WRT we now have a fully-functioning router again.

At my family's house, their router running DD-WRT has seen over 30 days of uptime and they are using wi-fi with multiple devices around the house.

UPDATE 6/15/13:  Our Linksys router running DD-WRT has now passed 15 days of uptime. This is a huge record for us because we have three people living in our house, and at least one person uses Netflix every day.  I don't ever remember the stock Linksys firmware lasting more than a week before a reboot was required.  DD-WRT has been running like a rock even through large file downloads and 30+  connections to

UPDATE 6/29/13: Now our seemingly invincible router has lasted to 30 days of uptime and is still going strong.  A huge thank you to the DD-WRT community, we will be donating soon.

Why to Upgrade a 120GB MacBook Pro Hard Drive

In April 2011, I posted about the iFixit Guide and Tools needed to replace a hard drive in a 15" Late 2007 MacBook Pro.  My existing, and original hard drive is only 120GB, and has been nearly filled to capacity since about year after I got the computer.  This means I don't even have the recommended 10% free space available at all times.

Now I'm laying out the reasoning for spending $75-100 on a bigger hard drive and about $20 on the tools to get the job done.

1. Not have to constantly wrestle with low hard drive space
2. Install Final Cut Pro.
3. Have some space for video editing
4. Keep all of my music on my laptop
5. Have more space to edit big Photoshop files
6. Have space for Video tutorials and TV show episodes
7. Have space for a few DVD backup disc images

Late 2007 MacBook Pro video card defect

My 2.2GHz MacBook Pro (late 2007) suddenly threw me a kernel panic a couple of weeks ago when I came home after it had been on for the evening. Upon shutting down the mac and booting up again, a strange pattern of gray lines started appearing right after the Apple logo appeared. Within a few more seconds, a crazy pattern of gray and black lines were on the screen and another kernel panic had appeared. This was not good, but as long as my hard drive was not dead, I knew I would survive.

Unfortunately I did not snap a photo before taking my mac in to the local Apple authorized repair center. Another blogger Irrashi had the images below on his post MBP: Distorted Video Problem, which are very similar to the scrambled video and following kernel panic I saw when my mac was having the video problem.








The video card was defective, as with many other MacBook Pro models from 2007-2008, and the repair was done completely free of charge and my laptop was ready for pickup the next day.

Apple requires their authorized technicians to ship back the faulty part within 48 hours of completing the repair. This makes it tough for small businesses that have only one or two technicians, but it does mean that you'll get your mac repaired very quickly if you ever need to take it in.

Learn More:
MacBook Pro: Distorted video or no video issues - Apple.com

Upgrading a MacBook Pro Hard Drive

It's time to replace the stock 120GB hard drive that came with my 15" MacBook Pro (late 2007).

Here's the hard drive I've decided on out of many drives available on Newegg.com

Western Digital Scorpio 2.5-Inch 500 GB SATA Internal Hard Drive WD5000BEKT

[also on Amazon]

Why this drive?
* 5 year warranty for parts and labor
* 16MB cache
* 7200 RPM
* 5 star reviews on Newegg.com
* under $100.

Price:

$75 4/28/11
$60 3/19/11 (after $10 off with promo code EMCKGJB49, ends 3/24 )
$70 3/19/11

The tools and installation guide

26 Piece Driver Bit Kit [iFixit.com]
Spudger [iFixit.com]

The Hard Drive replacement guide from iFixit.com

* Only a Phillips #00 screwdriver, a T6 Torx screwdriver, and a Spudger are required to replace the stock hard drive in a Late 2007 15" MacBook Pro, however, for only about $7 more, I can get an entire kit of hard to find driver sizes.

Video Capture Devices for Mac to transfer VHS tapes

Here are some of the budget friendly video capture devices for mac computers that will help you transfer or digitize your VHS, 8mm, or other video tape collection.

Elgato Video Capture
4/5 mice from Macworld
4 star review average on Amazon
$100 retail
$83 on Amazon
Trim, audio, and video controls
Large preview window
Video resolution: 640×480 (4:3) or 640×360 (16:9)
Video format: H.264 at 1.4 MBit/sec or MPEG-4 at 2.4 MBit/sec
Audio: AAC, 48kHZ, 128 kBit/sec
includes easy-to-use capture software
Composite and S-Video inputs

Elgato Video Capture Input Device Review | Macworld


Roxio Easy VHS to DVD for Mac

3.5 out of 5 mice from Macworld
2.5 star review average on Amazon
$80 retail
$66 on Amazon
Composite and S-video inputs
No controls for adjusting video or audio settings
No trim option

Roxio Easy VHS to DVD Input Device Review | Macworld


See a video of Macworld comparing the Elgato and Roxio video capture devices:
Digitize VHS video tapes | HDTV | Macworld Video | Macworld


Other, pricier options. . . .

Best DV Converter/Video Capture device - Macworld Forums
The best DV converter available on the consumer level is the Canopus ADVC-100. If you look around you can pick one of these up for about $250. This box will allow you to hook your VCR up to your Mac's FireWire port and send your video right to iMovie. It's not quite as convenient as a DV camera, because there is no machine control, but it works pretty well.
There are three or four DV converters available in the sub-$300 price range, but the Canopus is the best of them. This will enable you to get your VHS tapes into iMovie. You can edit them there and put them out to DVD using iDVD.

iFixit hardware prices - hard drives

Hardware prices for MacBook Pro parts on ifixit.

Hard drives for my MacBook Pro

11/12/10

500 GB 7200 RPM Seagate SATA Hard Drive (New)
$85

750 GB 5400 RPM Western Digital SATA Hard Drive (New)
$120

500 GB Hybrid Seagate SATA Hard Drive
Hybrid, 7200 RPM with 80% faster access times
$159

500 GB 5400 RPM Western Digital SATA Hard Drive (New)
$78

640 GB 5400 RPM Western Digital SATA Hard Drive (New)
$98



4/29/10

160 GB Solid State Drive
$500

120 GB Solid State Drive
$400

500 GB 7200 RPM Seagate SATA Hard Drive
$130.