Get a 15" October 2008 MacBook Pro. You lose that gorgeous keyboard but gain the unibody design, glass trackpad and most importantly, reliability. They're similarly spec'd to this one (2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, 9600M GT) and can be picked up for around £300 on eBay.
Based on the pictures shown, that is definitely the GPU beginning to fail. Now, these chips do not fail purely because of heat. The main cause of failure is actually a manufacturing error/defect of the chip itself by nVidia. The problem can by permanently fixed by replacing the GPU chip with the 2010 revision of the chip (the manufacturing error was corrected in this revision). The long white screen you get at startup is not a problem at all, your startup disk just isn't selected in System Preferences. Lastly, the power issues you are experiencing are simply due to the bad battery... I'd remove it ASAP, as it is probably beginning to short out and could destroy your entire system. Note (as you've probably experienced), these systems require a battery with at least some charge to power on at all, whether the power adapter is connected or not. If you want a MacBook Pro of this style, look for ones with the ATI Radeon X1600 GPU and a Core 2 Duo CPU (most ATI-based ones you find will have a Core Duo, like one I recently won on eBay for $30). Core 2 Duo versions exist, but are a bit harder to come by. Note also that these machines cannot run anything newer than Lion officially, but MLPostFactor can be used to get Mountain Lion on there. The Core Duo models, of course, can only run Snow Leopard, but I've been using mine as a secondary machine and it works just great!
Yup, good advice, although the ATI powered ones tend to fail in a similar fashion. To be honest, I don't think getting a really old Mac that is out of warranty is a good investment as your main laptop, where reliability is a BIG issue. I sold my 2011 15" MBP because reports of diing 6490Ms and 6750Ms started appearing on the internet and just got a 13" Air with Haswell and integrated graphics, it's about half as powerful, but has no dedicated GPU that will fail soon and the battery lasts for ages!
A load of great comments and feedback here, thanks a lot to everyone who has commented. Part 2 will be a slightly different video, I'll probably be sitting down and chatting to the camera about the updated behaviour of the system and my possible future MacBook Pro plans. Expect that video sometime next week.
Great video! but if you really loved that case design of Apple's pre-unibody mbps then why didn't you go with the late 2006 model because it sported a Core 2 Duo like your 2008 one but had the ATI Radeon X1600 as opposed to the faulty 8600M GT ItsMyNaturalColour
i just bought the same mac as the one in the video its in pristine condition and only has 38 battery cycles it was $80 with mouse and charger from a garage sale great start to 2018
Really sorry about your MacBook Pro. Kinda sad to see this, it's the reason I found your channel. I remember watching your unboxing video and I really enjoyed it and just kept watching. Best of luck to you, Tom.
Thanks a lot for your kind comment Tyler. It's great to know that you found me through the unboxing of this. Everything in life has it's purpose. Thanks for watching.
ItsMyNaturalColour 2008 MacBook Pro 15" Here still working flawlessly.. I run mine all the time doing Video editing and light gaming and have never had an issue. All I can say is, Get a Solder reflow job right now.. Don't wait until it totally conks out.. Reflows aren't that expensive and It'll save you a lot of bother later on.
Use to have this model. Also one of my favorite MBP design. Currently love using my late 2013 - 15" Retina MacBook Pro 2.3GHz Intel Core i7 Quad-Core (Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz) 16GB SDRAM - 512GB FlashStorage Intel Iris Pro Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M graphics w/2GB GDDR5 memory 802.11ac - Thunderbolt 2 ports - Bluetooth 4.0
To the chap asking about why they class this as vintage. It just means it no longer has any support from Apple. It has nothing to do with it being able to run the latest OS or not. It's just such old hardware they no longer consider it worth supporting.
I got a late 2006 one of these, it's the 2.4GHz 2gb top of the line model. It has an ATI graphics card. Only bad thing about it is that it can only run up to lion. But it's OK because lion is great and fast. Sorry about your macbook, it's a great machine.
Aw man, that sucks dude... I'll keep an eye out for any 2008 MBP out there. You could always swap the keyboard and have a brand new machine if I come across something.
technically speaking, you could breathe some life into this older machine. Upgrade to a SSD, reconnect all the lcd cables, buy a new higher quality battery and charger. You could also buying a another as a parts machine and replace any circuit boards, like the graphics chip thats failing. Problem is, by buying all of this, it's not worth the expense, when you can buy a new used machine.
2:07 Actually, one of my personal favourite things about that is how iconic the design is to me. 2:30 If only I lived near to you, then you could try my 2012 11.6 inch air which is still running 10.8 (LOL) and I'm typing from it right now I just remembered that the music teacher in my former school owned a 15.6 inch pro like yours complete with a whole bunch of software, Windows partition(mainly to run the interactive CD-ROM that came with the music books) and some Adidas app thing that I saw opened on logon. 3:15 I know you're trying to say that the design is so iconic to you, right? 3:53 *that's ExpressCard 34!* 4:28 yeah it does look "gorgeous", even though it's off… 6:58 a similar thing happened with my 2008 white back when I had it. In fact, I have a whole bunch of screenshots showing the battery capacity as it deteriorated if you want to see them. 9:15 I do the exact same thing with my MBA!
It might be the Magsafe board in the computer, i had to in my old powerbook that had a similar problem. ill say this, good luck getting that board out.
Tom it looks like a heat related issue not a gpu issue there's not enough air getting to the gpu , trust i had the same problem on same model if you take it apart blast it with some air gently around where the gpu is sat i did with mine and it worked ok for a while with no screen probs check to see if the cpu fan is working ok as well
hi tom! may i ask if you've tried reballing the faulty GPU on your MBP it as of 2017? it would be a great project for your channel! hope to hear from you soon man! keep up the good work! :)
Going to guess its your left I/O board that has gone. My mom's MBP (same year and everything) has had the same issues and we swapped that out, it's been fine ever since. Also had a 2007 MBP that had power issues relating to the LED driver and that is also controlled by the Left I/O board. Seems to be a common problem.
i owned this macbook, the exact same model as yours, and it worked perfectly fine until a moment in a day i closed the lid, and when i came back one hour later, the screen stayed black! The laptop was running but i couldn't see anything! But at the time it was the only mac that i owned, so i took it appart, i placed the motherboard in the oven for about 8 minutes, put the machine back together and it worked again! i sold it for parts and invested in another one . . . Every macbook like this will die no mather what!
I`d say that MacBook is really nearing its death. It`s an absolute shame that the laptop has so many issues yet still continues to work like nothing happened
So sad when your favourite laptop dies, I think we all know that feeling. I have an old Sony Vaio (13inch screen) that I travelled with for many years. It was my only PC for about 8 years, it really did me proud and I didn't have any issues until the battery started failing after about 5 years. I replaced the battery but gradually it began to need more and more maintenance until one day I decided to clean the fan again and when I put it back together it wouldn't turn on. I think it's probably a connector on one of the ribbon cables but I tried for days to fix it. I still can't bring myself to throw it away though, it was the most expensive computer I have ever bought and now it's totally useless !
I just thought about my old MacBook 3,1 the charging problem might be from dirt in the MagSafe port try and clean it and see if that helps because it fixed mine. Good luck again
My DC Jack in my main laptop (Samsung NP300E5A) is broken too... I can't even turn it on. I hope on fixing it soon because I need it for things such as school.
The bulging trackpad and battery happened on my 2009 13' white macbook, which disappointed me because even as a PC user, It was a smooth little machine. I also had to get rid of it because the display would randomly not work because of the connection between the lcd was faulty.
Hey Tom, i love your stuff, I really do love the stuff you produce. Many a time you've be very close to convincing me to get an older, say Powerbook G4, i think id love it! I love my mac computers, I have a late 2011 13 inch MBP from new, which I really love, it just keeps on going! Ive had two 2006 iMacs, a 2012 MBP, a 2007 MacBook, And I still have a 2010 11 inch MacBook Air! I also have an intel NUC hackintosh system. Anyway, Im sad to see your computer dying, pity about their issues! i really hope you can upgrade eventually! I would consider donating my 11 inch MacBook air, but i know it'd be impossible for you to use with your eyesight! Keep these videos coming!
Honestly I agree I love the design on that generation of MBP espically the keyboard. Now I had the 2006 1st Generation with the intel core duo, even after putting a SSD in the machine which help extend it's usefulness, the 2GB of ram cap on the motherboard was awful. So when I had the oppertunity of purchasing a late 2009 unibody White MacBook for under 200usd I jumped on it and was able to up it to max specs for under 400usd (including a new fairly good battery) Some days I miss the 15 inch screen but I've never looked back the preformance and zero problems are worth the screen and backlit keyboard. So I highly recommend the unibody white MacBooks becasue you can get them fairly cheaper than their aluminium counterparts of similar specs.
This is common problem with GPU with BGA - specially 8600GT... It's just from the heat, the soldering points (the ball grid array) is falling apart. Sometimes this artefacts are from the GPU memory. There is fix for this - but it's not permanent. You can put the motherboard in the oven on 200 celsius for 10 minutes. You can read about this technique in the Internet. Good luck.
It may be worth taking out the drive and shove it into a caddy then run disk repair and stuff from your Mac Pro. At least that way you'll be able to complete the tests on a stable system and if it fails you know the drive itself has problems.
The other option also is to boot up into a Snow Leopard/Mavericks disk or recovery partition and then do a repair from that. Thats what I used to do a repair on my iMac. TalesOfWar's option may be a more thourough option though.
Wow thats unfortunate, but I can see why you like the older MacBook pros. I also think they look nice but I have always hated how Apple used materials that dose not hold well over time compared to the newer MacBooks. I ended up getting a steal of a deal on craigslist just 3 days ago. Someone was selling a mid 2009 13 inch macbook pro 2.53 GHz, 4GB ram for $200.00 and I talked him down to $140.00. Nothing wrong with it, it has scratches here and there on the lid, no dents or scrapes but other than minor cosmetics nothing majorly wrong with it. so maybe you will find another 2008 macbook pro in better condition on craigslist or ebay. Best of luck to you man!
Hello I have a MBP early 2011 and i love it... Recently made some major upgrades ( ram and ssd ) and i think i'am pretty close of its limits... So i'm wondering upgrade the factory 1440x900 LED LCD to a hi res one (1680x 1050 ) do you think i wll get a realy gain in real screen state ..? Thanks
Hey man really I don't see the point, it will slow down the machine at best but if it's working great then keep it the way it is. Wait till it's no good then get a retina machine. My advice anyway ;)
I think it's the GPU (though it's one of those issues that has the same symptoms as other causes, which is a pain lol). I've seen the same problem on other laptops with the same graphics chip. It was a great performing chip but it was unreliable as all hell.
The lights on the mag safe charger are unreliable so use OS readings and the battery is bulging what do you expect. Also its a cheapo battery, I had a cheapo charger smoke so bad it sweet off the fire alarms
I watched the video where you were excited about the unboxing/unwrapping and then had that dreaded moment where you realize that you bought something used from Ebay and it's not as you'd had hoped. I've had that with other types of products, so far not with a computer. I got one of these used as well, recently, for about US$250. Mine is working but I noticed sometime after the Apple boot screen and just before it goes to the desktop there is a quick color cycle where you see a rainbow of colors then the screen changes shades one darker then it goes into the desktop and everything is fine after that. Not being a "Mac guy" I didn't know about the history of these early models so I had no idea about this possible issue. I guess that mine is a ticking time bomb too. That being said. it's not my only machine and I actually just won an auction for an early i7 quad core with 16gb of RAM, and am awaiting that. What can I say? I just don't like paying new Apple prices? Okay, back to the early 2008 silver keyboard model. Mine is a 2.4GHz model with 4gb of RAM, and a 160gb drive. It runs well and I know EXACTLY what you mean about the form factor and keyboard being so cool. It's a cool model, and I like it a lot. I hope you get all that sorted.
I totally get you, mate. I owned the exact same model, but it was 2.2 GhZ. Loved the exterior and Keyboard sooo much. But ever since Apple lost support to the model, owning them has become harder. Best of luck on getting it fixed. It's a gorgeous machine. Cheers! (=
I have the same but a 15" 8600m 512gb model that wasn't replaced under the warranty either, 3rd party battery is shot but works fine in all other respects, it's a lottery . I think you have several dodgy things making repair a poor option, inverter could be causing flicker, failing delamination 8600m chip, hinge clutch cable and plus lcd failure imo battery quite likely at fault or perhaps pci / charger ? Another £125 to repair ? To Replace lcd panel , inverter, pmu board, display clutch cable and new battery. Manual 8600m repair
Fixed mine my cooking logic board in oven because it melts solder and to form better connection. This will fix graphics issue every time. Google for guide
i would say at this point i dont think at all, it would be a good idea to rebuy this machine. this was my favorite macbooks as well too unreliable as you say.
Great video, but I don't understand. Why would you buy a product that is known to have issues, is pretty old (buying 2008 at 2013), and having issues since day one? Like, you just kept a very problematic machine without saying anything to the seller?
Well I bought a iPhone 3GS that had known battery, speakers and even dying completely issues and I bought it because I wanted a cheap iPhome 3GS for a while. And now that's broke I bought a £48 iPhone 3GS. And even my iPad Air 2 and iPad 2 have flickering issues.
That's normal for a 6 year old laptop with a dedicated gpu that's had heavy use to get this working you would have to strip it down completely go over the gpu with a hot air gun, apply new thermal compound clean the fans heatsink, replace the screen cable, replace the battery you may have an extra issue with charging jack, change that hard drive. Then it should be okay, that series of gpu may flake out again and you'd have to repeat the process Since this is your main laptop you should just replace the entire machine, you'll sink money into this and it will fail again
Good lord I owned that machine 2008-2016 and sold it last year with the same graphics chipset; I'm glad I did. That's a shocking failure for Apple :-( they're supposed to be bulletproof
Sorry to see your poor Mac there I can tell it has annoyed you in your voice. I hate to say this but think about how much it could cost to repair you would need a new battery, new charger, new power board, graphics chip and screen by the time you have bought that you might have to budget for a new Mac Pro. Good luck with it though.
Just a suggestion, you shouldn't make the thumbnails of the video be so lightly colored or maybe you put a filter on it, but i matches the filter over videos that have already been watched. A lot of times I skip over your videos because at a glance, It looks like I already watched it.
Tom would you consider buying a cheap laptop with and i3 possessor and hackintosh it? That's what I did when my Core 2 Duo died on me and getting a Dell Inspiron 15 3000 and hackintoshing it was the best decision I ever made dude!
The 'vintage' thing may not be an issue for the user, however I had a woman I knew judge me based on my 2008 mbp. Because it was not a unibody she felt it was okay make a value judgement on me and my worth as a human being. As well as look down on me because my 'vintage' mbp was not the new unibody model like the one she had -2009 13 inch. Believe it or not there are many people who will judge you and your financial status based on which mac you have. I have a unibody also, however again I recently had someone judge me on that as well because it was not the retina display model. Again I was judged and looked down upon because of the model mac I own.
+der Künstler Why should someone care? It's pointless. I have a 2010 MacBook. Not a pro, not an air, the white unibody MacBook. Runs perfect. Minus the SD card slot and firewire that's on the 2010 pro version, I'm not missing anything. Same exact specs and a lot cheaper. Some people are just ignorant.
+Phillip Jernigan i care because it happens frequently and affects me. It is annoying because I experience this often. Its been more than just a couple of times.
der kunstler I wasn't saying why should someone care for your predicament. I was saying why should someone care for what laptop you use. It's pointless to make those kind of comments to someone just because you are using an older MacBook Pro. Those people judging you are ignorant.
Yeah I thought I deleted that comment, my bad I did watch the whole video, but even if this is your favorite design and such I wouldn't get something that's known to do this
ItsMyNaturalColour yea i feel bad for ya, I had the same macbook pro and that was the shortest lifespan of any laptop I have ever owned. It really put a bad taste in my mouth and i havent owned anything apple ever since. Tho I still have my old iMac G3 :D
The problem isnt the laptop, it would be the cheap battery, they are known for damaging laptops and when they bulge they explode or self combust, the genuine ones seem cheep for a battery but what most people dont realise is inside the battery there is a pcb that controls the battery ( when to charge, when to stop charging etc) and if its a cheap £15 battery what quality must that be if they need to pay for the casing for it, the battery cells inside and the circuit board inside? Must be a very poor quality, change that for a genuine and it will work like new, is it worth wrecking the laptop over a cheap battery?
I had graphics and display issues long before the battery went. I had display issues 1st day I had it. I agree that the cheap battery isn't doing it any good but it's probably not the only thing wrong.
just try blowing out the fan and redo the thermal compound, and i think letting it control its own fan might help it abit more, also you can try a cooling pad (one that works like a coolermaster)
also if u can get to the gpu stick abit of thermal paste on it , leave it for a hour to set How to: Replace thermal paste on a Macbook Pro theres a link to how its done THIS WELL FIX YOUR PROBLEM lol it did with mine
Touhou Fan XP David Di Franco has one and he said "and also let me just make this clear I have Mavericks on my MacBook Pro but it runs like crap it's so sluggish",and he found out that Yosemite runs better
That's Adium, a really good IM client. I use it for Facebook chat connectivity, great if you're not in the mood to dedicate a browser tab to Facebook but you still need to chat to someone on there. It was a great Microsoft Messenger alternative back in the day (that actually worked) but of course that is no more. It integrates with a lot of IM services, it's worth a download.
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Get a 15" October 2008 MacBook Pro. You lose that gorgeous keyboard but gain the unibody design, glass trackpad and most importantly, reliability. They're similarly spec'd to this one (2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, 9600M GT) and can be picked up for around £300 on eBay.
i saw the unboxing !
might have to look at that for my girlfriend (:
Based on the pictures shown, that is definitely the GPU beginning to fail. Now, these chips do not fail purely because of heat. The main cause of failure is actually a manufacturing error/defect of the chip itself by nVidia. The problem can by permanently fixed by replacing the GPU chip with the 2010 revision of the chip (the manufacturing error was corrected in this revision). The long white screen you get at startup is not a problem at all, your startup disk just isn't selected in System Preferences. Lastly, the power issues you are experiencing are simply due to the bad battery... I'd remove it ASAP, as it is probably beginning to short out and could destroy your entire system. Note (as you've probably experienced), these systems require a battery with at least some charge to power on at all, whether the power adapter is connected or not. If you want a MacBook Pro of this style, look for ones with the ATI Radeon X1600 GPU and a Core 2 Duo CPU (most ATI-based ones you find will have a Core Duo, like one I recently won on eBay for $30). Core 2 Duo versions exist, but are a bit harder to come by. Note also that these machines cannot run anything newer than Lion officially, but MLPostFactor can be used to get Mountain Lion on there. The Core Duo models, of course, can only run Snow Leopard, but I've been using mine as a secondary machine and it works just great!
Yup, good advice, although the ATI powered ones tend to fail in a similar fashion. To be honest, I don't think getting a really old Mac that is out of warranty is a good investment as your main laptop, where reliability is a BIG issue. I sold my 2011 15" MBP because reports of diing 6490Ms and 6750Ms started appearing on the internet and just got a 13" Air with Haswell and integrated graphics, it's about half as powerful, but has no dedicated GPU that will fail soon and the battery lasts for ages!
How do you replace the GPU anyway?
I've got the Radeon X1600 C2D model and it's got some graphics problems
Do you think a reflow or the oven method will work for tbe X1600?
A load of great comments and feedback here, thanks a lot to everyone who has commented. Part 2 will be a slightly different video, I'll probably be sitting down and chatting to the camera about the updated behaviour of the system and my possible future MacBook Pro plans. Expect that video sometime next week.
Great video! but if you really loved that case design of Apple's pre-unibody mbps then why didn't you go with the late 2006 model because it sported a Core 2 Duo like your 2008 one but had the ATI Radeon X1600 as opposed to the faulty 8600M GT ItsMyNaturalColour
i just bought the same mac as the one in the video its in pristine condition and only has 38 battery cycles it was $80 with mouse and charger from a garage sale great start to 2018
Really sorry about your MacBook Pro. Kinda sad to see this, it's the reason I found your channel. I remember watching your unboxing video and I really enjoyed it and just kept watching. Best of luck to you, Tom.
Thanks a lot for your kind comment Tyler. It's great to know that you found me through the unboxing of this. Everything in life has it's purpose. Thanks for watching.
I found the channel through the power mac quicksilver videos but that was ages ago.
ItsMyNaturalColour Stay strong Tom if any one could get through this its you. You can fix anything! Great videos as always. Big fan
The keyboard is the reason why I still quite often use my PowerBook G4 - quite a few non media productivity things still work well on it.
I loved this intro, the bit where the imnc logo comes forward sounds like the apple bong
7:48 "So the disk just goes KA-PLEW & that's the end", that one cracked me up so much.
ItsMyNaturalColour 2008 MacBook Pro 15" Here still working flawlessly.. I run mine all the time doing Video editing and light gaming and have never had an issue.
All I can say is, Get a Solder reflow job right now.. Don't wait until it totally conks out.. Reflows aren't that expensive and It'll save you a lot of bother later on.
Use to have this model. Also one of my favorite MBP design. Currently love using my late 2013 - 15" Retina MacBook Pro 2.3GHz Intel Core i7 Quad-Core (Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz)
16GB SDRAM - 512GB FlashStorage
Intel Iris Pro Graphics
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M graphics w/2GB GDDR5 memory
802.11ac - Thunderbolt 2 ports - Bluetooth 4.0
To the chap asking about why they class this as vintage. It just means it no longer has any support from Apple. It has nothing to do with it being able to run the latest OS or not. It's just such old hardware they no longer consider it worth supporting.
It's Heart breaking when a peace of Tec you love so much is coming to its end
I always use the 3rd party power adapters. Never had an issue.
I got a late 2006 one of these, it's the 2.4GHz 2gb top of the line model. It has an ATI graphics card. Only bad thing about it is that it can only run up to lion. But it's OK because lion is great and fast. Sorry about your macbook, it's a great machine.
Aw man, that sucks dude... I'll keep an eye out for any 2008 MBP out there.
You could always swap the keyboard and have a brand new machine if I come across something.
technically speaking, you could breathe some life into this older machine. Upgrade to a SSD, reconnect all the lcd cables, buy a new higher quality battery and charger. You could also buying a another as a parts machine and replace any circuit boards, like the graphics chip thats failing. Problem is, by buying all of this, it's not worth the expense, when you can buy a new used machine.
2:07 Actually, one of my personal favourite things about that is how iconic the design is to me.
2:30 If only I lived near to you, then you could try my 2012 11.6 inch air which is still running 10.8 (LOL) and I'm typing from it right now
I just remembered that the music teacher in my former school owned a 15.6 inch pro like yours complete with a whole bunch of software, Windows partition(mainly to run the interactive CD-ROM that came with the music books) and some Adidas app thing that I saw opened on logon.
3:15 I know you're trying to say that the design is so iconic to you, right?
3:53 *that's ExpressCard 34!*
4:28 yeah it does look "gorgeous", even though it's off…
6:58 a similar thing happened with my 2008 white back when I had it. In fact, I have a whole bunch of screenshots showing the battery capacity as it deteriorated if you want to see them.
9:15 I do the exact same thing with my MBA!
It might be the Magsafe board in the computer, i had to in my old powerbook that had a similar problem. ill say this, good luck getting that board out.
Tom it looks like a heat related issue not a gpu issue there's not enough air getting to the gpu , trust i had the same problem on same model if you take it apart blast it with some air gently around where the gpu is sat i did with mine and it worked ok for a while with no screen probs check to see if the cpu fan is working ok as well
hi tom! may i ask if you've tried reballing the faulty GPU on your MBP it as of 2017? it would be a great project for your channel! hope to hear from you soon man! keep up the good work! :)
Im in the same boat as you, I've got the exact same machine but i haven't used it in months because the graphic issue.
Going to guess its your left I/O board that has gone. My mom's MBP (same year and everything) has had the same issues and we swapped that out, it's been fine ever since. Also had a 2007 MBP that had power issues relating to the LED driver and that is also controlled by the Left I/O board. Seems to be a common problem.
i owned this macbook, the exact same model as yours, and it worked perfectly fine until a moment in a day i closed the lid, and when i came back one hour later, the screen stayed black! The laptop was running but i couldn't see anything! But at the time it was the only mac that i owned, so i took it appart, i placed the motherboard in the oven for about 8 minutes, put the machine back together and it worked again! i sold it for parts and invested in another one . . . Every macbook like this will die no mather what!
I`d say that MacBook is really nearing its death. It`s an absolute shame that the laptop has so many issues yet still continues to work like nothing happened
So sad when your favourite laptop dies, I think we all know that feeling.
I have an old Sony Vaio (13inch screen) that I travelled with for many years. It was my only PC for about 8 years, it really did me proud and I didn't have any issues until the battery started failing after about 5 years. I replaced the battery but gradually it began to need more and more maintenance until one day I decided to clean the fan again and when I put it back together it wouldn't turn on. I think it's probably a connector on one of the ribbon cables but I tried for days to fix it. I still can't bring myself to throw it away though, it was the most expensive computer I have ever bought and now it's totally useless !
ItsMyNaturalColour why did you change your intro? This one was amazing.
I just thought about my old MacBook 3,1 the charging problem might be from dirt in the MagSafe port try and clean it and see if that helps because it fixed mine. Good luck again
My DC Jack in my main laptop (Samsung NP300E5A) is broken too... I can't even turn it on. I hope on fixing it soon because I need it for things such as school.
Tom, I had similar displayproblems on a Windowslaptop with the same graphics chip! Are you sure, that it is the Display?
The bulging trackpad and battery happened on my 2009 13' white macbook, which disappointed me because even as a PC user, It was a smooth little machine. I also had to get rid of it because the display would randomly not work because of the connection between the lcd was faulty.
Hey Tom, i love your stuff, I really do love the stuff you produce. Many a time you've be very close to convincing me to get an older, say Powerbook G4, i think id love it!
I love my mac computers, I have a late 2011 13 inch MBP from new, which I really love, it just keeps on going!
Ive had two 2006 iMacs, a 2012 MBP, a 2007 MacBook, And I still have a 2010 11 inch MacBook Air! I also have an intel NUC hackintosh system.
Anyway, Im sad to see your computer dying, pity about their issues! i really hope you can upgrade eventually! I would consider donating my 11 inch MacBook air, but i know it'd be impossible for you to use with your eyesight! Keep these videos coming!
Also i think you might need to let it control its own fan, blow it out and replace the thermal compound
I've seen 2009 15" MacBook Pros going for damn good prices on eBay, might be a worthy replacement.
I'm watching this on my 2012 macbook pro...I'm upgrading this year.
Honestly I agree I love the design on that generation of MBP espically the keyboard.
Now I had the 2006 1st Generation with the intel core duo, even after putting a SSD in the machine which help extend it's usefulness, the 2GB of ram cap on the motherboard was awful.
So when I had the oppertunity of purchasing a late 2009 unibody White MacBook for under 200usd I jumped on it and was able to up it to max specs for under 400usd (including a new fairly good battery)
Some days I miss the 15 inch screen but I've never looked back the preformance and zero problems are worth the screen and backlit keyboard.
So I highly recommend the unibody white MacBooks becasue you can get them fairly cheaper than their aluminium counterparts of similar specs.
Damn that intro ...its so good...
The thumbnail kind of has the same effect of a video you already watched. Though great video.
This is common problem with GPU with BGA - specially 8600GT... It's just from the heat, the soldering points (the ball grid array) is falling apart. Sometimes this artefacts are from the GPU memory. There is fix for this - but it's not permanent. You can put the motherboard in the oven on 200 celsius for 10 minutes. You can read about this technique in the Internet. Good luck.
It may be worth taking out the drive and shove it into a caddy then run disk repair and stuff from your Mac Pro. At least that way you'll be able to complete the tests on a stable system and if it fails you know the drive itself has problems.
That's a really good idea.
The other option also is to boot up into a Snow Leopard/Mavericks disk or recovery partition and then do a repair from that. Thats what I used to do a repair on my iMac. TalesOfWar's option may be a more thourough option though.
RIP mac pro :'( a sad day when any games console/computer dies
Wow thats unfortunate, but I can see why you like the older MacBook pros. I also think they look nice but I have always hated how Apple used materials that dose not hold well over time compared to the newer MacBooks. I ended up getting a steal of a deal on craigslist just 3 days ago. Someone was selling a mid 2009 13 inch macbook pro 2.53 GHz, 4GB ram for $200.00 and I talked him down to $140.00. Nothing wrong with it, it has scratches here and there on the lid, no dents or scrapes but other than minor cosmetics nothing majorly wrong with it. so maybe you will find another 2008 macbook pro in better condition on craigslist or ebay. Best of luck to you man!
Hello
I have a MBP early 2011 and i love it... Recently made some major upgrades ( ram and ssd ) and i think i'am pretty close of its limits... So i'm wondering upgrade the factory 1440x900 LED LCD to a hi res one (1680x 1050 ) do you think i wll get a realy gain in real screen state ..?
Thanks
Hey man really I don't see the point, it will slow down the machine at best but if it's working great then keep it the way it is. Wait till it's no good then get a retina machine. My advice anyway ;)
If the LCD Is not working then try tapping the bottom of the machine.
That fixed my Macbook pro. Its probably a loose cable.
I think it's the GPU (though it's one of those issues that has the same symptoms as other causes, which is a pain lol). I've seen the same problem on other laptops with the same graphics chip. It was a great performing chip but it was unreliable as all hell.
The lights on the mag safe charger are unreliable so use OS readings and the battery is bulging what do you expect. Also its a cheapo battery, I had a cheapo charger smoke so bad it sweet off the fire alarms
So sad man :( that's a gorgeous machine. Hope you'll be able to easily fix it without having to pay too much.
I watched the video where you were excited about the unboxing/unwrapping and then had that dreaded moment where you realize that you bought something used from Ebay and it's not as you'd had hoped. I've had that with other types of products, so far not with a computer.
I got one of these used as well, recently, for about US$250. Mine is working but I noticed sometime after the Apple boot screen and just before it goes to the desktop there is a quick color cycle where you see a rainbow of colors then the screen changes shades one darker then it goes into the desktop and everything is fine after that.
Not being a "Mac guy" I didn't know about the history of these early models so I had no idea about this possible issue. I guess that mine is a ticking time bomb too.
That being said. it's not my only machine and I actually just won an auction for an early i7 quad core with 16gb of RAM, and am awaiting that.
What can I say? I just don't like paying new Apple prices?
Okay, back to the early 2008 silver keyboard model. Mine is a 2.4GHz model with 4gb of RAM, and a 160gb drive. It runs well and I know EXACTLY what you mean about the form factor and keyboard being so cool. It's a cool model, and I like it a lot.
I hope you get all that sorted.
I totally get you, mate. I owned the exact same model, but it was 2.2 GhZ. Loved the exterior and Keyboard sooo much. But ever since Apple lost support to the model, owning them has become harder. Best of luck on getting it fixed. It's a gorgeous machine.
Cheers! (=
I'm usually not the one to say atodaso, but you know what? Atodaso, atodaso
I have the same but a 15" 8600m 512gb model that wasn't replaced under the warranty either, 3rd party battery is shot but works fine in all other respects, it's a lottery . I think you have several dodgy things making repair a poor option, inverter could be causing flicker, failing delamination 8600m chip, hinge clutch cable and plus lcd failure imo battery quite likely at fault or perhaps pci / charger ? Another £125 to repair ? To Replace lcd panel , inverter, pmu board, display clutch cable and new battery. Manual 8600m repair
Fixed mine my cooking logic board in oven because it melts solder and to form better connection. This will fix graphics issue every time. Google for guide
A similar keyboard is found on the toshiba satilite l300
Fix the cooling system for the GPU then massive problems fixed.
If you heat the gpu to a couple hundred degrees for about 10 mins and push down on it that helps
i would say at this point i dont think at all, it would be a good idea to rebuy this machine. this was my favorite macbooks as well too unreliable as you say.
The graphic card went out me and fyred my mother board
The screen issue it has to do with a bad graphics card. my IMac 21.5" did the same.
Yeah the 2008 MBP was known for GPU Failure.
Great video, but I don't understand.
Why would you buy a product that is known to have issues, is pretty old (buying 2008 at 2013), and having issues since day one?
Like, you just kept a very problematic machine without saying anything to the seller?
Well I bought a iPhone 3GS that had known battery, speakers and even dying completely issues and I bought it because I wanted a cheap iPhome 3GS for a while.
And now that's broke I bought a £48 iPhone 3GS. And even my iPad Air 2 and iPad 2 have flickering issues.
That's normal for a 6 year old laptop with a dedicated gpu that's had heavy use
to get this working you would have to strip it down completely go over the gpu with a hot air gun, apply new thermal compound clean the fans heatsink, replace the screen cable, replace the battery you may have an extra issue with charging jack, change that hard drive. Then it should be okay, that series of gpu may flake out again and you'd have to repeat the process
Since this is your main laptop you should just replace the entire machine, you'll sink money into this and it will fail again
Good lord I owned that machine 2008-2016 and sold it last year with the same graphics chipset; I'm glad I did. That's a shocking failure for Apple :-( they're supposed to be bulletproof
Is part 2 going to come tomorrow
If you think the battery in your laptop is bad,the battery on mine cuts out in half an hour
I would but the lcd problem down to the lcd controller
Sorry to see your poor Mac there I can tell it has annoyed you in your voice. I hate to say this but think about how much it could cost to repair you would need a new battery, new charger, new power board, graphics chip and screen by the time you have bought that you might have to budget for a new Mac Pro. Good luck with it though.
what year is this mac book
It's funny that my 17" early 2008 MacBook pro will run fine without battery.
Just a suggestion, you shouldn't make the thumbnails of the video be so lightly colored or maybe you put a filter on it, but i matches the filter over videos that have already been watched. A lot of times I skip over your videos because at a glance, It looks like I already watched it.
Tom would you consider buying a cheap laptop with and i3 possessor and hackintosh it? That's what I did when my Core 2 Duo died on me and getting a Dell Inspiron 15 3000 and hackintoshing it was the best decision I ever made dude!
The 'vintage' thing may not be an issue for the user, however I had a woman I knew judge me based on my 2008 mbp. Because it was not a unibody she felt it was okay make a value judgement on me and my worth as a human being. As well as look down on me because my 'vintage' mbp was not the new unibody model like the one she had -2009 13 inch. Believe it or not there are many people who will judge you and your financial status based on which mac you have. I have a unibody also, however again I recently had someone judge me on that as well because it was not the retina display model. Again I was judged and looked down upon because of the model mac I own.
+der Künstler Why should someone care? It's pointless.
I have a 2010 MacBook. Not a pro, not an air, the white unibody MacBook. Runs perfect. Minus the SD card slot and firewire that's on the 2010 pro version, I'm not missing anything. Same exact specs and a lot cheaper.
Some people are just ignorant.
+Phillip Jernigan i care because it happens frequently and affects me. It is annoying because I experience this often. Its been more than just a couple of times.
der kunstler I wasn't saying why should someone care for your predicament. I was saying why should someone care for what laptop you use.
It's pointless to make those kind of comments to someone just because you are using an older MacBook Pro.
Those people judging you are ignorant.
Get the 2007 model!
i love keyboards like that to :D
Watching on my macbook pro 2050
you should upgrade the CPU they a cheap on Ebay to buy
Really not sure why you bothered to get this machine, considering the known GPU issue.
I explained in the video, and yepp you said the same thing further down in the thread. Sometimes people make mistakes.
Yeah I thought I deleted that comment, my bad
I did watch the whole video, but even if this is your favorite design and such I wouldn't get something that's known to do this
ItsMyNaturalColour Why you don't get a windows laptop
ItsMyNaturalColour and why you get a 5 year old macbook pro
ItsMyNaturalColour yea i feel bad for ya, I had the same macbook pro and that was the shortest lifespan of any laptop I have ever owned. It really put a bad taste in my mouth and i havent owned anything apple ever since. Tho I still have my old iMac G3 :D
my 13" 2012 mbp takes even longer to boot..
The problem isnt the laptop, it would be the cheap battery, they are known for damaging laptops and when they bulge they explode or self combust, the genuine ones seem cheep for a battery but what most people dont realise is inside the battery there is a pcb that controls the battery ( when to charge, when to stop charging etc) and if its a cheap £15 battery what quality must that be if they need to pay for the casing for it, the battery cells inside and the circuit board inside? Must be a very poor quality, change that for a genuine and it will work like new, is it worth wrecking the laptop over a cheap battery?
I had graphics and display issues long before the battery went. I had display issues 1st day I had it. I agree that the cheap battery isn't doing it any good but it's probably not the only thing wrong.
just try blowing out the fan and redo the thermal compound, and i think letting it control its own fan might help it abit more, also you can try a cooling pad (one that works like a coolermaster)
also if u can get to the gpu stick abit of thermal paste on it , leave it for a hour to set
How to: Replace thermal paste on a Macbook Pro
theres a link to how its done THIS WELL FIX YOUR PROBLEM lol it did with mine
Even the 2007 MacBook Pros can run Yosemite actually
If they are upgraded somewhat.
Touhou Fan XP David Di Franco has one and he said "and also let me just make this clear I have Mavericks on my MacBook Pro but it runs like crap it's so sluggish",and he found out that Yosemite runs better
What screen resolution is that screen MacBook?
1440x900, like all MBP 15" before the Retina.
mehftv ok, pretty nice
put an ssd in that baby it will wake it right back up!!!!
Lenovo Thinkpad master race.
whats the icon next to skype in the dock?
That's Adium, a really good IM client. I use it for Facebook chat connectivity, great if you're not in the mood to dedicate a browser tab to Facebook but you still need to chat to someone on there. It was a great Microsoft Messenger alternative back in the day (that actually worked) but of course that is no more. It integrates with a lot of IM services, it's worth a download.
Thanks Tom
ItsMyNaturalColour I haven't used or seen Adium for years lol. Of course you would be using it still, with your love of all things "vintage"!
or a ibook g4 keyboard
my powerbook g4 has similar issues
I thought u going to put a ssd from that guy he have you
I ended up putting it into my recent PC build.
Get a Mac book pro with unibody and sad
well,time to cook your mac. thats what usually solves it
9:25 so do i
Your thumbnails are really bad. They seem like you have already watched the video.
Clearly u care about your Mac's it's dieing because u keep letting it fail take better care of your Mac's
I went through each and every one of these problems when I had one about a year ago. I ended up having to trash it when the graphics card crapped out.