Breathe new life into an old MacBook with THIS upgrade

Something very extraordinary has happened in the last 10 years and that is that the

life

span of our average everyday electronic devices has increased dramatically, from phones to desktop computers and laptops. Now

this

isn't something you might be aware of every day, but take

this

12 year old MacBook Pro, it came out in 2010 and honestly it doesn't look that old today, but what about in 2010 ? What did a 12-year-old Apple laptop look like when it was new? It looked like this, which really says a lot about what has fundamentally changed in the world of computers, so today we're going to talk about why a 12 year old

macbook

like this can still be used and how you can make it really amazing for less than hundred bucks, so if you're excited, make sure to leave a like below, subscribe and let's get started.

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macbook

pro these things were outrageously successful and basically built the foundation that the current macbook is based on 12 years later this design is 14 years old but it doesn't really look like it but that of course is only part of it because what What really matters is what's inside these things?

If you go back in time to 1998, that powerbook g3 that I showed you earlier, it came out during a time when the computer industry was experiencing absolutely crazy year-over-year growth back then, it wasn't unusual. For a high-end computer to be completely obsolete in four years, I mean, just look at the Apple line from 1998 and from 2002, it's radically different, but as the 2000s progressed and we got to the 2010s, something very important began to happen and that is that year-over-year growth began to slow down. This MacBook, for example, was the first to feature Core i5 and Core i7-branded processors, and while they weren't incredibly more powerful than the Core 2 duos they replaced, this was definitely the beginning of Intel. era of complacency, this is when Intel was absolutely at the top of their game and they basically didn't have much competition, so from this time until maybe like 2017 with the rise of Ryzen there wasn't much competition year after year. changes and some might see it as a bad thing, certainly if you are in favor of technological advancement you might be disappointed by that, however, is it a side effect of that or maybe it was intentional, who's to say that these old devices They're not really that slow now, obviously.

I'm not saying this is fast compared to an m1 max and it's not even close, I mean look at cinebench r23, it's really ridiculous, but the other key thing that's changed that allows a computer as comparatively slow as this to keep running . The good thing is that the fundamental things that we all do: browsing an operating system, connecting to the Internet, sending emails, messaging our friends, those things, frankly, are not very demanding, so even though you have an i7 of Dual core 12 years old, those tasks don't really require much from it, so the OS and the basic tasks you want to perform on it run perfectly fine, but that being said, there are some things you can do with an old macbook like this to make it a much more modern and much more usable one and the way I plan to review them is probably from the most impactful to the least impactful and of course what better place to start than with an ssd.

These macbooks ship by default with 5400 rpm hard drives and even in 2010 when this was new, that was clearly already the end of an era in 2012, just two years later Apple was already moving to an all-flash architecture, but which SSD should you choose? Because let's face it, this is not an expensive machine, it's probably worth less than dollars, so you don't want to spend a lot of money on something this old, not to mention the fact that this can only run two sata hard drives, so which makes no sense to put in a super fast modern ssd when you're not.

You're even going to make the most of it now if you live near a microcenter, definitely take advantage of a coupon that's been circulating for months that lets you get a free 256-gigabyte SSD if you sign up now, of course. If you don't live near a microcenter, I'll plug in some cheap SSDs that will be more than enough for a machine like this. In the description below, the benefits of an SSD speak for themselves, so it's really not necessary. go into more detail on that, but what we do need to go into detail about is the RAM, this device, although 12 years old, has a dual core i7, can actually run up to 16 gigabytes of ddr3, but again, there is a something that really needs to be maintained.

What I keep in mind is that when you're talking about upgrading a machine as old as this, you don't want to spend that much money, so 16 gigabytes of DDR3 memory may be more expensive than you might think, so I think it's the ideal point. it actually runs on eight gigabytes of memory, I mean, if it's good enough for Apple to still ship max everywhere today, then it's probably good enough for one that's 12 years old and now, at this point , there will almost certainly be some comments. down saying luke luke you have to update the thermal paste that's the next thing you want to do the thermal paste that is included in these is designed not to be the one that works the best but the most durable and that means you don't have to reapply it every two years, as is sometimes recommended if you use custom thermal paste, so the next two

upgrade

s I would recommend aren't necessarily super popular, but I think they will be more noticeable than a replaced MacBook. 12 years and as such it comes with a 12 years wireless card and that can cause some problems because here we have bluetooth 2.1 edr, we also have wi-fi 802.11 bgn, it is quite limited and by default this only comes with two antenna bands, so it's not as good at the edges of your wifi network, so what I would recommend doing is upgrading the wireless card.

Honestly, it's a pretty simple job, all you have to do is open the bottom of the machine and on the top left. The corner is the antenna, unplug it from the logic board and disconnect all the antenna connections coming out of the screen and you can change that board now. There are a couple of different options for this and things to keep in mind. You may have noticed that there were four antenna connections on this MacBook and that's because it already had a 2011 Wi-Fi card installed here. The 2010 one only has three connections. Now upgrading from a 2010 wireless card to 2011 or 2012 makes a big difference. because it has more antenna bands, which means better reception towards the edges of your Wi-Fi network, as well as being faster and more stable, but one thing you may have noticed is that if you

upgrade

from 2010 to 2011, the screen You have to change because it is physically different in terms of the antennas that are there and that brings us to the next and most fun upgrade if you are already changing the screen to access the higher speeds of a newer Wi-Fi card.

Well, improve it because, let's be honest, the screens on these old unibodys are not the best. 1440x900 on a 15.4-inch screen definitely looks a little chunky and it's especially noticeable with text. It's not ideal, but fortunately the 15-inch MacBook Pro has this relatively unknown. update that we can take advantage of and this is it, yes, this is the anti-glare screen right now, a lot of people who know that their macbooks are going to work, oh, of course, and a lot of people are going to go back, uh, yeah, back. Before retinas came out, you could opt for a hundred dollars for this display panel that features a higher resolution and a matte anti-reflective coating, as well as these silver bezels.

It definitely has an interesting look, it's not something you see very often and you can In fact, I bought these things for cheap, this one was extremely cheap and more importantly it's from 2011 which means it has the connections which we need for this airport card, so let's go ahead and give this machine a pretty good upgrade. Upgrading a screen is very easy, all you have to do is remove the bottom cover and then on the left side, disconnect the screen and remove a bracket that holds the cable in place, then disconnect the antenna and camera from the motherboard and then disconnect the antenna cables from the airport card. itself, which you can remove from the case with two Phillips head screws, after that we can remove the screen, two t6 screws can come out from each side, leaving one in place so we can put the machine on its side, open the screen 90 degrees and then remove the two remaining screws to facilitate the removal of the screen now with the new piece just follow the steps in reverse and finally with everything reassembled the screen that I ordered had some stickers and residue so we will give it a good cleaning and now our rejuvenated MacBook is ready to go in my opinion.

If I had to rank the upgrades we've made today, I'd put the SSD first and then this screen second. It's so good that it makes a big difference just going from 1440 by 900 to 1650 by 1050. It makes a big difference in how sharp the text is and how good the screen looks, the pixel density is noticeably better, the colors are vibrant and beautiful and I must be honest, I love the silver bezels, let me know in the comments below if you agree, do you think? they look great or dumb now if we add up everything we have done here today 30 dollars for an ssd 31 for ram 10 for a wi-fi card and 30 for the screen then we get 101 technically I failed but the micro center The coupon gives us the free ssd, which brings it down to $71 and that's a pass, so for about a hundred dollars you can do a lot to make the experience of using an old MacBook like this much better, whether it's upgrading one you already have. have or buy one cheap or rescue one from a recycling center or that a friend was going to throw away there are many ways to get these old macbooks and this type of upgrade makes it worth it, it really shows how far technology has come 10 years ago You wouldn't have dreamed of using a 12 year old laptop, but now it does pretty much everything you'd want a cheap sub 200 laptop to do and it does it remarkably well, so let me know in the comments below if you think it's a good one. idea, a 12 year old MacBook is just as useful today as a much newer one, let me know below.

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