The easy $36 MacBook Pro project

[@michaelkaszynski7658]

I find old laptops all over the place and can get them working as good as new with minimal effort. I work for the VA and find vets in need that don't have a computer and gift them. It's a very rewarding hobby. I often steal parts from another machine to service another but many of the machines I fix just need a clean reinstall and a new power cord. Keep up the fixes.

[@ravenrue]

@ᗩՏᕼIՏᕼ ᗷᗴᕼᗩᖇᖇY Get a job. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

[@mduff94]

The Veterans Administration is lucky to have an employee like yourself. Good work.

[@ThatTonybo]

Hi from Australia! I do this too kind of. I get bulk lots of thrown out, old or decommissioned school/govt PCs, scrub them down, maybe add a new stick of ram or an SSD and pass them on to folks that need them :-)

[@willm5032]

I'd love to do something like this in the UK- do a community project that gives kids/people in need tech. Its v hard to find the computers here though. As far as I'm aware

[@2wayplebney]

Very cool.

[@justNGC604]

I'm going to miss those kind of projects in the future. Imagine this with a 2016+ MacBook Pro.

[@mpiloz8016]

it's such a pain removing the batteries from those. edit: changing out the speakers is relatively easy though.

[@willm5032]

Its a shame Apple have chosen the way they have. Appreciate that they want to innovate but its a shame their innovations are at the cost of repairability and upgradabililty.

[@mohammedb4ig]

@@willm5032 i mean they can at least attempt to make it easier. it's such a pain in the ass trying to change a macbook battery. and the software locks on the iphone too

[@mbrock5532]

@@willm5032 Yeah, they "innovate" on purpose to make it virtually impossible for people to do anything to "their" Apple products. They're fighting Right to Repair, but frankly, even if they end up having to comply, they've made it so difficult to do anything without super expensive equipment, it's going to be tough to do your own work like this anyway. Unless you have Louis Rossman skills!

[@willm5032]

@@mbrock5532 Yuuup, you're not wrong

[@JarrodsTech]

Easy to replace battery, RAM and hard drive, those were the days 😅

[@vamnpyre]

Yeah

[@peyton_1524]

Well now you gotta take out 999,999,999 screws change the RAM, battery and hard drive

[@zacharymaclellan6761]

@@peyton_1524 Except now you have to just replace the whole MacBook!

[@MirceaD28]

It is today too. But you have to escape the Apple prison.

[@edarioconsebido7563]

How much you give me the price for this MacBook Pro 16"

[@BeaglefreilaufKalkar]

A couple of months ago I was given a MacBook Pro 17" 2011. The owner told me it was way to slow to work with anymore. I bought a 46,99 Euro (just over 50 Dollar) 500GB Crucial SSD, put it in and did a fresh install. It has an i7 and with the SSD it works really fast and great. More than enough for surfing, office, simple HD Video editing.

[@LeeVxt]

Until the GPU craps itself... My 17 2011 is still chugging along great

[@NobelTech]

These Macs have notorious GPU issues, however there are tutorials to disable the dGPU and only use the Intel HD Graphics one.

[@BeaglefreilaufKalkar]

@@LeeVxt then I have an excuse to buy an M1x Laptop, or an M2x whenever this happens :-)

[@spost26]

@@NobelTech I haven’t had any luck getting the change to stick … Do you have a link to the fix?

[@davidbassplanc]

@@NobelTech link???

[@Stevel_]

These videos interest me 100x more than anything about new iphones, pads, pods, watches. Please keep sprinkling them into the mix, thanks Luke!

[@GuillermoPaulman]

Same.

[@miguel_montenegro]

Another hard to believe deal from Luke “the-luckiest-deal-finder-on-earth” Miani. Well done by the way, great video! I’m glad to see more projects like this again in the near future

[@krajca666]

Hahaha. ...exactly

[@roninmagik1]

I've been going to Goodwill's for years, never found a laptop much less a MacBook

[@harlow1126]

i would say ive beaten him once or twice, once got a 2015 15 inch 2.5ghz macbook pro, with a 512gb ssd for 40 bucks :P

[@baoquoc3710]

@@harlow1126 solid AF man, even with intel iris graphics only😀

[@mikeclark8794]

Just picked up a totally free mid 2009 17" MacBook Pro with 8GB ram included & separately a free 240gb SSD - Freecycle is the way to go. The battery is okish, may change at a later time - see how it goes. The cycle count is only 81 but it was left uncharged for several years so only holds charge for 2-3 hours. My only cost so far is a £5 usb WiFi dongle as the WiFi card was not working and a £6 enclosure to convert the M2 SSD to SATA. Using OpenCore-Patcher it now happily runs Monterey 12.4 and with Quartz Debug the screen res is running 960x600 HiDPi (although its not a retina screen it looks as good to my eyes). Considering the graphics are only NVIDA GeForce 9400M 256MB it's running very well. Good luck, go hunting - you never know!

[@ironnerd2511]

My brother in law was about to dispose of a "non working" MacBook Pro 15 inch mid 2012. I asked him to give it to me. Only problem was a bad battery and looked like new. I purchased a cheap used battery on ebay. Latter on upgraded to a 250GB SSD and maxed it to 16GB of RAM. Upgraded to Catalina and now planning to replace the heat sink thermal compound before upgrading to Monterey by using the Open Core Legacy Patcher. It is my daily driver and I love it. It came with the power adapter and everything looks brand new. Even the keyboard. I also purchased a funky multicolor shell case protector. I'm happy.

[@therichardrichyrich]

These videos are so much fun to watch! They remind of your early videos when I first started watching your content! You've progressed so far!

[@esseferio]

I also missed this a bit, although there is only so much you can do on this subject :)

[@basewrecker9222]

Yeah, I really loved those videos.

[@felipebertholet]

I just got tired of continuous rumors and new cpu performance videos

[@timg6930]

Love the reviving old tech videos. I wish MacBooks were still upgradable.

[@octavius9685]

i just got a 2010 MacBook Pro for $115 on ebay and maxed it out for cheap with 8gb RAM and 240gb SSD... Nice little laptop for work and even got Catalina running on it smooth as hell

[@ukaszmackiewicz3568]

Some time ago I bought 17-inch Macbook Pro 17 (not booting to OSX) for 14 USD incl. shipping (in Poland OFC), with crucial mx500 256gb SSD inside! Found out that was faulty Radeon GPU, I've switched it off in terminal, changed thermal paste, cleaned internals and voilla - working. 16gb ram was inside, i7 and ori battery with good condition. Charger was also included by the seller. Keep up Luke with your work!

[@volkhen0]

Where the heck did you find such offer? My best score is 2 dollar Apple Bluetooth keyboard on Allegro ;)

[@Arachnosoft]

Just for the charger (which sells insanely expensive), you had a bargain, even without a working MBP... Great find!

[@jurygamper1252]

*luke in an apple store sees a macbook*: "I'm gonna go check that out"

[@jpreza]

I've done a few fixes myself for F&F. My mom who is not very tech savvy was looking at purchasing a brand new laptop a few years ago. I got her a 2012 Macbook Pro that I bought at a pawn shop 3 years ago for under $75. It was marked as "broken - does not boot". It actually did boot but had the Folder icon. Brought it home and imagined my surprise when I opened it. It had a 240GB SSD and 4GB RAM - not too shabby. Installed High Sierra and gave it to my mom as a surprise present. She uses it for email, web surfing, and watching KZbin videos. This 2012 Macbook Pro is still going strong!

[@dusthillresident]

Your videos are awesome, and I really admire the mindset and philosophy of repurposing old equipment that's still perfectly useful, and giving it a new lease of life, saving it from ending up in a landfill. I'm typing this from a late 2011 macbook pro that I just watched this video on

[@Joel-ew1zm]

Nothing more rewarding than a rescue project. I have a 2012 11" macbook air with the upgraded i7 and 8gb of ram that i got for FREE because the shift key was stuck and it only booted into safe mode. Took it apart and reseated the keyboard ribbon cable which fixed both issues.

[@erkinshadow99]

I have the same laptop that I bought in late 2008, 8gb of ram and a512 gb SSD. Still works great.

[@zacharyhale1681]

I love how we're coming back to the hardware side of your channel. Though I'm afraid for the future of the unrepairable Macs.

[@sbsphotographer]

Excellent content without clickbait speculation! Luke is back!!!

[@slimestaff9537]

@@whaletrain7070 can I get proof since I don’t know if it was real or not

[@slimestaff9537]

@@whaletrain7070 proof of it being click bait or not, I’m not sure

[@slimestaff9537]

@@whaletrain7070 thanks man 👍

[@maxpayne7030]

Still rocking a 2010 MacBook Pro 15" with 16 GB RAM and a 500GB SSD 😍. Gonna upgrade this year

[@deanstyles2567]

They work surprisingly well with an SSD and 8GB of RAM, but the CPU usage does spike with modern web browsing. I used one of these late 2008 MBPs for a decade, good unit.

[@marcusgurley9495]

i love doing these kinds of projects. i repair and give to the homeless and foster kids in the local schools here.

[@blackcoffeegarage]

I recently snagged an absolutely loaded early 2008 model, 17 inch with the maximum CPU (2.6 BTO). Loaded the DosDude High Sierra patcher, and this thing is absolutely snappy. A real pleasure to use. I dropped in a cheap SSD, of course, and on light tasks when the fans aren't spinning it is silent and capable. The keyboard is fantastic for a lot of typing/writing, and of course the 17" BTO LED backlit display is in a class of its own. With winter coming, I might run a few apps in the background just to get it to warm up my lap for those 6 hours of battery runtime LOL

[@blackcoffeegarage]

@Binuk Vidana Gamage Legs too ;D My M1 MBA 16GB/1TB is an ice cold task-killer. Never had so much power in such comfort. Charge it twice a week. Life is good!

[@jameschamplin1742]

Thanks to your channel, I learned enough to take a chance on a $12 iMac someone had. Turns out it's a late 2015 21.5" iMac with a quad-core i5, 8 GB of RAM, and a 1TB drive. All it needed was an OS! I'm about to install Mojave and enjoy! Thanks! :D

[@thesuperzfamilyvlog6607]

I did it! I found a MacBook Pro for $20, and I’ve started upgrading it. I am just waiting on a part and battery and it’ll be ready to go!

[@StoicOutlaw17]

I would recommend changing the thermal paste in one of these before using it or giving it to someone else.

[@JK-qk8rh]

I got an old MacBook Pro from Mid 2009, slapped 8 GBs of RAM, a 500 GB SSD and a new battery in there and installed macOS Catalina with dosdue1's patcher. It works just fine. Monterey and Big Sur are possible but they don't look good and don't function flawlessly so I'll stick with 10.15

[@n1ghtr4v3n6]

I got a 13” mid 2012 MacBook Pro for 15$ without ram and a dead battery and hard drive. Put 12gbs of ram, a 480gb ssd and a new battery and it runs like new.

[@d76stock]

I really missed these repair videos! So glad they’re back!

[@Ricelord4]

I got a free 2009 MacBook Pro 13" from a high school where my mother used to work. They were throwing it away, and she asked if she could take it. She then gave it to me since she didn't know if it was working. Over the years, I maxed out the RAM to 8 GB, swapped out the HDD for a cheap SSD, upgraded to macOS Mojave via the patch from dosdude1, and replaced the speakers and battery. Still works great to this day!

[@TheBigBazzy]

Nice pickup. I really appreciate your deep dives into Apple device repair. Most people assume devices are trash far too early. Great job Luke.

[@MattCook206]

“Let me look in my RAM drawer” haha the most Luke quote ever. Great video as always. ! Thanks

[@mattstone8878]

I just bought two Macbook Pros for $20 off FB Marketplace in San Diego. One was a 15 inch from early 2011 and the other a 13 inch from mid 2012. Both were missing hard drives and RAM. After they were added, both machines worked!!!

[@mr.techie8565]

I'd love a remake of the "Best Macs under $200". Maybe some with different price points as well though.

[@mohammedb4ig]

macbook air 2015 11" are the best for that price

[@Austin_Boath]

@@mohammedb4ig but they are extremely slow, best to be more patient and save up some more money to buy the 2016 pro or 2018 MacBook air refresh

[@weegle.]

if you're on any kind of budget, please don't get a mac. It will almost always be a better deal with MUCH better performance to get a windows pc

[@mohammedb4ig]

@@weegle. nah macs are greatly optimized. best to get a mac (for basic tasks. you can’t do anything with a $200 laptop)

[@weegle.]

@@mohammedb4ig a laptop with an optimized os would almost never beat a laptop with plain better specs. Plus, if you really want an optized experience, use Chrome OS, Linux, or Windows 10S. Also, I've used a cheap macbook (300$); it's slow, clunky, and can barely run any applications due to its age. As opposed to a 300$ Windows laptop I used which could at least download any application I wanted and ran pretty okay

[@JasonSantos21]

love that you continue to push content like this -sent from my mid 2012 mbp running the latest big sur long live the unibody!

[@justgivemethetruth]

And you can use it for weight-lifting practice.

[@ahappycoder2925]

@@justgivemethetruth *laughs in 2009 16’ MBP*

[@TheSpotify95]

Pretty darn good if I say so! Especially the free SSD! 256GB SSDs (or 240GB SSDs) are worth about £25 in the UK. And yes, I do also have some random RAM sticks laying around: some DDR4 (from when I upgraded my gaming laptop), some DDR3 (as spares for other machines), and DDR2 (which I got in a job lot).

[@ZaneEckols]

I was literally looking at old macbook pros to restore yesterday so this video came perfectly on time!

[@6StringPassion.]

Great find. That was the machine that convinced me to switch to Mac. Lots of ports, easy to tweak. All the benefits of OS X plus you could run any other OS in a VM. Great for development use. Even had digital optical input/output which was fantastic for recording and something that I can't believe Apple dropped.

[@yagizerenyuce]

Pretty decent video. I would be happy to see that boy in real world test such as office apps, browsing or maybe playing some games.

[@GalacticRod]

Keep in mind with some of these old ones you might need to change out the battery too! sometimes those cycles can be pretty high, so they can't keep a charge.

[@sergioadriangonzalezcerver9960]

You can do a video similar to the 30 dollar iMac, those things are insanely cheap and relatively usable by today standards

[@miguelmontoya1320]

Coupon is in store only. I haven't had my hopes and dreams destroyed like that in quite a while.

[@RICKYSERTV]

Me too

[@ExplainwithShaun]

I have a ram drawer to. Now I am not the only one!

[@611paladin]

5:18 You could call that: *a box of good memories*

[@Epicgamer_Mac]

Hey in the ad… it’s my man Sam Kohl promoting CleanMyMac X!! I didn’t know Samothy Cookothy did that

[@pillowzzzbox3466]

Amazing. I am looking forward to trying my own project build.

[@michaelhuey4187]

I definitely like the revival videos! I found a 2015 15” MBP with the discrete GPU (the maxed out model) for $400 on CL a couple years ago. I cleaned it up, redid the thermal paste, spent a lot of time and deep digging to reinstall the OS and upgrade it, and bought a Magic Mouse ($20 on CL) and voilà, I have a GREAT Mac‼️ I Love It❣️ Keep making these videos, Luke. These old Macs are still quite usable.

[@Ordlnary_Gamer]

Amen, I have a MacBook Pro 2012 Unibody and it’s still useable for light gaming, streaming, and most tasks

[@Arska.A.Tiikko]

I feel you man.. I also have MacBook Late 2008 13”. I doubble The Ram to 8 Gb and upgrade hard drive to 256 SSD. Battery was dead, So I bought a new one.. And The Next step is to install MacOS Catalina in it. Bytheway.. Good and interesting videos you have in you Channel..👍

[@jamieadams4310]

Awesome find. You should adjust your camera shutter speed to prevent the scanlines on the Macbook screen! ;)

[@terrywarnold]

I will be doing this exact upgrade in a few days. I just won a bid for a 2008 15 inch. Just under $35 including shipping. only issue that I'm aware of is there's no OS installed on it. I as well have the dosdude patcher on a flash drive so, I'll be installing that. I'll use it as it is for now but, I'll eventually upgrade the RAM and change it over to an SSD.

[@RowdyGeronimo]

Classic Luke repair video. Love it! Suggestion: I would like to see you work on a white plastic MacBook. I don’t think I’ve seen you work on one of those or if you did I don’t remember. Thanks for the fun content.

[@NormanF62]

Old MacBook Pros never die. They’re surprisingly usable today and are a good value.

[@NoahAviation09]

yes watching on my 2012 with a 120gb ssd and 8gb ram

[@littletechkids9440]

Reminds me of my project MacBook. It’s a late 2008 unibody 13 MacBook (not the MacBook Pro) I bought that sucker off of Craigslist for 10 bucks. They said it was broken and didn’t work. The glass is also cracked. 30$ in parts later (battery, charger, and hard drive) we have a fully functional MacBook! But yeah pretty similar to the one in this video. (It also has the latch on the bottom.)

[@warthunder1969]

I have that exact laptop, and it is a goodie. I don't use it for much these days but it was cheap, and ram + ssd makes old almost new again.

[@java2architect]

It is amazing how only KZbinrs seem to find used Macs in thrift store :-)

[@tintobrass532]

My dear friend, you have approached this project with a true and noble heart and perseverance, and for this reason all of France adores you…

[@kayrokk]

Luke I just bought a mid-2012 15” i7 MBP with 16GB of RAM for $20 a couple of days ago myself. Bad battery, missing bottom case screws and hard drive. Bought a battery from Amazon for $20 and slapped in a 256gb Samsung SSD I had installed in another machine and it fired right up!

[@Lorenzo-rw9cn]

You can do it I’ve done it on my 11-year-old MacBook Pro 2013 and I got macOS Sequoia but the Wi-Fi driver is broke and I cannot use the computer so do not try it. Just get something like Sonoma or get Sequoia because it’s the latest versionin the time.

[@petersdotter1]

I love fixit. Been using it for my Macs for years!

[@cinemaadherent]

This reminds me of when I sold my 2009 Unibody on e-bay. Logic board was kaput, I removed the HD and listed it as broken/parts only. The guy who bought it was pissed as he just thought it needed a new HD. Guy it literally said broken/parts only in the title and 5 times in the description.

[@93Volvo240]

I used that exact same SSD in a 2011 iMac 21.5 that a computer repair shop was throwing away. The thing looked like new and worked fine! I think it was just being trashed due to its slow HDD. I now use it quite often, and it’s really fast for a 12 year old computer! As usual, great video Luke!

[@codymusial1706]

I daily a 15 in 2009 MacBook pro and I absolutely love it

[@jamesdriver0317]

I’m planning on buying the 2015 MacBook Pro, and I’ll get it an old Thunderbolt Display. Nice to see Micro Center on another channel besides Austin Evans’s channel.

[@gabrielaherrera9937]

absolutely recommended. I bought mine last year very cheap because it was "broken" according to the owner and aesthetically it looked really bad. It turns out that he erased the disk partition with the operating system. I cleaned it up, installed macOS from a usb, and got a very powerful machine for little money. the battery had only 230 cycles! it was the best deal of my life. Also, It is the latest model that you can open, clean and update by yourself without problems, the keyboard is amazing and it is still compatible with new versions of macOS (runs really well) go for it!

[@jamesdriver0317]

@@gabrielaherrera9937 for your comment, you have gained one subscriber. Thank you for helping me make this decision.

[@cl_0ud470]

@@gabrielaherrera9937 omg that's a crazy steal. How do they even forget that there is no OS inside the disk. Nice find man

[@gabrielaherrera9937]

@@cl_0ud470 technically it was not a steal. after i bought it, had the blinking question mark sign when booting so i thought 'probably the ssd is dead' and i was ready to buy a new one but then i got the idea to boot it from an external hard drive that a friend lent me and format the ssd to see if it was working… and it was. It seems to be that the owner didn't know what that sign meant and simply thought it was totally broken.

[@08v28]

What about linus tech tips 💔

[@sparky6757]

I suppose in a sense this is a good deal, but this thing’s so ancient that its security patches have got to be at least a few years out of date, and I wouldn’t feel safe using it with any personal details for things like banking. So it would see near zero use even though I don’t have a Mac, so I’d rather have the $36.

[@Cookefan59]

All I can say is Wow! I am now on the hunt. I had always wondered if this kind of scenario was possible. I have old school computer skills that I will no longer waste on windows based machines. I can handle these levels of diagnostics and repairs quite easily. Our business needs some new computers to run cloud based applications and this looks like the right approach. Thanks for all your hard work putting these videos together.

[@Two_Olives]

The perfect fit for this would be Elementary OS :)

[@leocompany]

Absolut not

[@barriemoorcroft534]

I'm fixing my old laptop from 2006. NEC Windows core duo. With an ssd (even sata 1 speeds) it now flies on Windows 7 32 bit. Stuck with a max 2gb of ram though! But I love that old machine. Keyboard is best ever (similar to ibm) and I swear touchpad is better than ANY Windows laptop, and is very close to Apple smooth.

[@michaelwood9866]

Got a fully stock 2012 mbp with no blemishes and looks new with no dust on the inside at all! Was found at a recycling center.

[@impatrickt]

when I see Mac and cheese out of the corner of my eye im gonna go check it out

[@Randomdude-i8x]

Such a rewarding hobby to max out specs on old hardware.

[@victorreznov9940]

I recently bought a mac mini for $50 on Facebook marketplace thought it was a 2012 model with sodimm memory but it turned out to be a 2014 with soldered memory, wish I could easily max this out. It only has the dual core i5 @1.4ghz base, 4gb ram, I replaced the hdd with a 1tb m.2 I pulled from a broken surface tablet I got for $30

[@rolandgerard6064]

This kind of video are so much better than the so called "leaks" ones.

[@lukola]

This is crazy! Good job Luke!

[@iNerdJan]

Luka, du hier?

[@lukola]

@@iNerdJan ja

[@cacooke77]

You would be surprised how far you can go with the DosDude or Mr. Macintosh patchers. I'm typing this on a 2010 Mac Pro with 32gig of ram and a 1tb ssd running the Monterey OS. Smooth sailing so far.

[@davidrogis1110]

I am totally impressed with your awesome finds and easy fixes.

[@pianoplayer2147]

I love these montages! They look so fancy and cool!! Keep it up! I honestly think you should have a million subscribers

[@emilianotechs]

I just ordered a 2013 Mac Pro to mess around with and got addicted to your videos! 😂

[@josch1710]

This was my first modern Mac. Such a good computer.

[@SignorLuigi]

Love these resurrection videos as they are still, by far, my favorite content on your channel. (No intent to throw shade on other content.) Crack on, mate!

[@Harishsulghar]

Have you ever thought of loading in Zorin OS as a mac OS alternative for older macbooks like this one? Would be interesting to see how different OS performs on these older machines. Probably something that can also extend lifespan of a machine like this. Great video as always.

[@Arachnosoft]

Debian 11 is the best running OS I could find (and install) on my current late 2006 (yes, 2006) A1211 MacBook Pro. It was the only recent OS to carry the necessary graphics driver for its old X1600 ATI, along with the latest software updates you could expect (including Chrome). Both patched Mac OS X and Windows 10 lack the latest accelerated graphics drivers.

[@yairbentzionstrauss2545]

I still use my late 2008 unibody MacBook with upgraded ram and an ssd and I upgraded it to Mac OS Catalina it’s very very slow but I’m kinda broke and have no money to spare so I made the best of what I have.😂( overall tho I don’t use it very much simply because of how slow it is)

[@rndmusrnm2763]

My mom is a housekeeper at our local university and she's found perfectly working 2012 MacBooks in the dumpster before, AirPods too its insane.

[@Errcyco]

Dope little video man.. nothing beats getting something fixed for (next to) free.

[@MrBrewsk]

I had a similar situation except I got 6 Macbooks Pros for free because they were in the e-waste bin at the company I worked for. I asked about them and they told me they don't work and I could have all of them. I reset PRAM and SMC on all 6, I got 5 fully functional Macbook Pros for nothing. There was nothing physically wrong with any of them. My kids loved me because they got Macbook Pros for school. All I had to do was reinstall OS and 5 functional systems. It's amazing what companies will throw away.

[@tquad8699]

Tried Big Sur on my 7,1 MacBook Pro runs well enough. Mojave definitely runs better though but it’s still usable. Acceleration is available now.

[@JessicaFEREM]

this is better than the modern macbooks, easy battery replacement, easy hard drive removal, easy ram upgrades. what's not to like?

[@TechnicFreakJulian]

8:34 thtas actually not true, ive got here an late 2008 mac book core 2 duo running monterey without any proplems. yes its a little bit louder and slower but it has got full app support for every single 2022 app

[@Tefloncoated]

I don't really need one but inspired by your video I've just bought the same macbook and I will be doing the same thing. Wish me luck and thanks for the content.

[@LarryGanz]

I have my late brother's 2012 unibody with DVD that I gave him 6 years ago, that I plan to resurrect one day soon. It's got a 1TB hybrid SSHD and 8GB ram, with a few dents I can cover with a hard shell. It could be used for entertainment in the guest room with a pile of DVDs. Gonna see if I can adapt my spare 512 GB mSATA to connect in the 2.5" drive bay, or look for a deal on an SSD like you.

[@TechGently]

I worked for a very popular Mac Reseller here in the States and we had warehouses where overstock would lose us money so it looks like this reseller figured out it'd cost them money for space and it was cheaper for them to give away the hard drives.

[@garfieldbaddie11]

as a user of this macbook model, (mother purchased it on the day it came out,) i love this.

[@Crystal-mn9rk]

Omg you are incredible, Luke!!! Glad I found your video, I was almost going to recycle my 13yro MacBook before I watched your video, definitely gonna try refreshing it, haha I'm so excited 🥳🥳🥳 thank you so much for making this video and all of these resources, subscribed 💕

[@SenileOtaku]

OK, my mid-2010 MBP cost me $75, not $20, but it had the power adapter and a HDD in it, so it was already functional (I also picked it up along with a Thinkpad T430 for $25m which only needed a CMOS battery). I swapped the HDD for an SSD I already had, and eventually bumped it up to 16GB (an unofficial upgrade, officially it only supports 8G). I used the same OS patcher to install Catalina as well. Then later from the same flea market, I got a working 2009 MBP (also with HDD and power adapter). Put in the 8G I used to have in the 2010 machine, and did the same OS patcher install to Catalina. That one became my daughter's machine. Other than that though, not much else in the way of old HW, the Goodwills around here have NO computers, and precious little else in the way of worthwhile electronics. Unlike the early 1990's when I'd see vintage computers all the time.

[@yuanjcj7268]

watching on a 21.5 inch 2009 Mac Its slow as hell but its still going strong for a 12 year old computer

[@ykm15282]

Sold my late 2008 Macbook Aluminum and bought mid 2010 Macbook Pro for 110$. Don't know why I love this era of Macbook so much😂. Maybe next i will get the 2012 model.

[@onlineconsumer4796]

I would like to see you do a step by step of the patch tool and some things to do and not do and what to watch out for.

[@MegaTechpc]

Great video Luke! I would say that in order to make this video most useful for regular viewers then you should post up the retail price of that SSD in the total cost (since these deals for a free SSD are very rare and also dependent upon your proximity to a MicroCenter; the closest one to me is in Atlanta, GA, some 5 hours away for example). Still, you listed tons of helpful resources for regular folk and I think its absolutely fantastic that (for you) you were able to rescue a perfectly capable MacBook with decently modern MacOS on an SSD and with 8GB of memory for $36! Of course you always manage to find these kinds of deals that I can never manage to find but its still quite impressive! Full disclosure: I’m really only posting this comment because I just got a new Magic Keyboard for my brand new iPad Pro 12.9 and I wanted to experience the typing experience! Other than the necessarily small trackpad, this thing makes my iPad feel and function almost as well as a MacBook! 😮

[@Ironapple09]

You can put Big Sur on those, with opencore legacy patcher.

[@jgbenz3628]

Luke! Three things!!! One is your videos for the Macs are so great and wonderful, thank you for creating your channel!!!! Two, is: the screen LOOKED SO BAD… how would one work on a computer with a screen continuous movement? And IF THAT is or THERE is a way to comfortably enjoy the computer while looking at it THEN? What we all want to know and SEE is how well does the laptop work in todays world, what’s the hang-ups?

[@Voidelle]

It’s kinda mind blowing to think that you can give real life back to a machine that came out a year after the first iPhone. Word processing, web browsing, general productivity stuff etc. is TOTALLY viable on a machine like this. Say what you want about apple, but a design/build quality/legacy support system that makes ANY tech last this long is something to be impressed with. In theory (especially if you were using a lighter Linux OS) you could bring a 2008 premium PC laptop back to life and make it “the same level” or even better in the same price range, but It wouldn’t look nearly as clean or be up to snuff with most modern interfaces, most often at least. An old thinkPad would probably be the best option for PC aesthetics IMO.

[@Inkling777]

I asked someone at Goodwill why they didn't sell used laptops. He said that they were afraid of the liability if private material had been left on it. What you saw might be a workaround for that issue. If the hard drive is easily removed, simply remove it and sell it that way. Of course that doesn't work for later models where the hard drive or SSD is soldered in.

[@saadms07_]

Bring back videos related tear downs and repairs. Miss it