Upgrading an old Macbook 2.1

[Juuldebuul]

Hey guys,

 

I'm trying to make my GF's life a little bit easier by fixing up her old macbook. We're both students so we don't have the money right now to get a new laptop, so no use in recomending me to "just get a new one" . I have already doubled the ram from 2 to 4GB, but it's more than 8 years old now and it's never been reinstalled, I think it's still running leopard or something.

 

My questions are, what's the most effective way to make it a workable piece of kit again? My thoughts were, reinstalling the entire thing, preferably on a newer OS... but which one? Also I'm thinking of swapping in my old samsung PM810 SSD 256gb instead of the horrendous 160gb 5400rpm drive that's in there now. Would that SSD even work in a machine that old?

 

Also I read something about being able to upgrade the Santa Rosa macbooks to 6GB's of ram, not sure if that's true. and if it is, it it's even a viable upgrade.... maybe 4GB is enough for a simple machine? She does do some light photoshop work from time to time so if a newer OS swallows all that ram then I'd rather stick with an older version of OSX. But I really don't know much about OSX.

 

I hope you guys have some tips for me, this laptop is so slow it can barely run Safari anymore. We need help!

 

Thanks!

[Luke4efc]

An SSD would benefit a bit, however I don't imagine the Macbook has Sata 3, so the fast speeds may be a little redundant, but still worth getting.

4gb of RAM should be plenty for Macs, they are very efficient with consumption

You might be able to squeeze something past Snow Leopard on there, however Apple fazes out old devices support as new ones are released.

[Lord_Karango17]

The SSD  will do wonders coupled with a new install of a newer os, but one thing you will have to look at is weather the macbook has sata 3 capability.

 

If it only works with sata 2, the ssd should still work, but it will be capped to the max of sata 2 which is around 300 mb/s

 

Also on the point of the ram, 4gb should be enough for every day tasks, considering my desktop does not go over 3gb of ram usage unless im gaming (different hardware/ OS, but still...)

[dbcooper]

SSD + Snow Leopard would be the best option

[Juuldebuul]

Thanks a bunch guys! I'm gonna try to find out if it has Sata 3 but even if it doesn't I'll probably still try the SSD route, especially since the PM810 is an older SSD, I doubt it will even get capped by the Sata 2.

 

Should I have a reason to doubt if that Samsung PM810 will even be recognized by the macbook? 

[Guest]

I'll cast my vote for an SSD and Snow Leopard. Should make that machine entirely usable.

[evilarceus]

If it's running Leopard, it will have a PowerPC processor, which means you can not upgrade it's OS.

[Guest]

If it's running Leopard, it will have a PowerPC processor, which means you can not upgrade it's OS.

 

Nope. Intel machines first came with Tiger and if it were a PowerPC based machine it would be an iBook not a MacBook. 

[Diederik_Gr]

Are you sure the slot in there is SATA, I believe i had a laptop that's also 8 years old and uses a ZIF connector.

Edit: nevermind, it should have a SATA connector.

[dbcooper]

If it's running Leopard, it will have a PowerPC processor, which means you can not upgrade it's OS.

 

It's a macbook 2.1, that laptop uses a Core 2 Duo 

[evilarceus]

Nope. Intel machines first came with Tiger and if it were a PowerPC based machine it would be an iBook not a MacBook. 

Read a thread wrong. Gotcha.

[Juuldebuul]

Thanks a bunch guys, I'm gonna go for it .