Personal thing here.
While I have a glorious thinkpad, and I love the fuck out of it, sometimes I really just need some small shitty thing to throw in a bag. I have a netbook, but it has trouble enough running the BIOS let alone an OS (and most of the time the OS just explodes anyways so whats the point?). So, what I have to fit what my now dysfunctional Y40 used to fit is a Macbook 1,1. Why? It was 12 bucks out of a scrap store and it was the least used of all the available macbooks there. Though, it was at the bottom of the stack of them all, so it is cracked and brittle in places. My unit appears to be from a school, which is probably the easiest place to buy one, or, a few of these if this post interests you.
So anyways, why a 1,1? A 2,1 is at least a core 2 duo, a 3,1 has an actual GPU, and a 4,1 can run mavericks (I think? That may be a 5,1 though)! Well, for what I need a light no-weight laptop for these days is something to throw notes on and use the internet. If I really really want to, I can play Deus Ex 1 and CS 1.6, as well as any 2D game in my steam library except Stardew Valley. I like Pages more than anything else, and since the 1,1 is 10.6.8 max ONLY, I have Rosetta available, meaning that I can run all of my PowerPC based Mac apps, of which I do have quite a few. On top of that, I can install other apps, such as Vivaldi or the newest firefox, using PlayonMac for wine. I can also install MacPorts, Brew, and some community app-stores from around the net to run different things.
So what are the base specs of a unit and what can you expect to see as a cost to upgrades here?
CPU’s on a 1,1 are 32 bit, Core Duo’s and Core Solo’s at 1.83 GHZ, 2 GHZ, 2.13 GHZ, and 2.3 GHZ. For a core solo the clock speeds will matter, but on a duo it won’t make a terribly huge difference over all / at all. Unless you really want graphics performance, in which perhaps a faster proc will help. My unit has a 1.83 GHZ Core Duo with 3mb cache.
The graphics in all of these 1,1’s are intel i950’s or 945GM’s, which are comparable to 9600/9700’s from years prior. Though probably not in GPU performance in whole as a 9000 series chip can handle games like TF2 or Fable a lot better.
The max ram a 1,1 can have is 2GB listed, but 3GB is actually possible. If you get a 2,1 with a core duo in it you do have 3GB available as it is DDR2. If you have a 2GB DDR Ram bit, you can get 3GB on some models (though the exact ones I
have no clue) I have just 2GB of the fastest DDR I could stuff in here.
SATA 1.5 is your sata bus here, though for the most of what you do it won’t matter that much, most likely. An SSD will do well for you. I have just a small 500GB 7200RPM drive in it though.
Also, changing the airport card might be worth your time. For a good 5 bucks or a dig in some scrap, any 10.6.8 compatible internal wireless card will work if it goes in the minipci slot. You can even butcher a card from a 2009 macbook pro I believe. I havun’t done this though as it doesn’t matter to me.
“Alright cool so what the hell is the point of something like this then? Why would I want some old pile of shit when I have a Razer Blade or whatever thing.”
Well, for one, it weighs nothing. Two, if you lose it, you’re out 30 bucks max. Three, if it dies, you can get another one for 10 bucks, throw your upgrades and hard drive into it, and call it good. Four, if someone steals it, you automatically get revenge on them for it being a pile of shit.
Oh, also most, if not all, apps that are 10.6.8 compatible are easy to find or free on 10.6.8 now. And, 10.6.8 happens to be the most stable version of OSX available at the moment, and seems to have held that title for a while.
“Uh huh… Well not a bad idea. So why is it the Best ever for you?”
As I said, it costs as much as a burger and a beer, and you don’t really care if you lose it. Good for me as my thinkpad is still in that “But its valuable” status in my mind. With that, parts are plentiful. Very easy to find. You can rearrange the keycaps fine, mine are in dvorak, and with no mods to how it attaches. And again, I don’t need sandybridge to play spotify and write some stuff on Pages. The newer drive lets me use it as a file server as well, which for me being on the go a lot is nice when I need to dump footage.
“Uhhhh. Right. Point?”
10 bucks. Nuff said. Might be shit, but you want a netbook with a good screen, 10 bucks.