R.I.P. Early 2008 Macbook Pro: 2008 – 2014
My venerable early 2008 model Macbook Pro, purchased brand new, has chimed its last “bong” for the last time. It served me well for 6 and a half years. The machine will power up, but quickly locks into a perpetual reboot. Moving to the console makes it evident that there are some video artifacts (pinkish, green tinting) thanks to the flaky Nvidia GPU in the unit.
My visit to the Apple Store this afternoon was really my last ditch effort to revive this beautiful machine. The diagnosis? Motherboard swap – and, oh, Apple no longer carries the parts for vintage machines like mine. (How a machine that can still run Yosemite is considered “vintage” I’ll never quite understand.) The Genius’s diagnosis was quickly delivered. As he left, I stared at my laptop as if it was a loving pet about to be euthanized. I hung my head low as I walked out of the Apple Store.
In that brief encounter, the Apple Genius did direct me to a few places in town that would perform the repair, but at this point, I knew that it didn’t make much sense to put $200+ into a six plus year old Mac.
In hindsight, I suppose it was fortuitous that I came into possession of a new Macbook Pro shortly before the old one decided to give up the ghost. I didn’t expect to buy a new Macbook Pro, just like I didn’t expect my old Macbook Pro to die so soon. I maintain that the old Mac was jealous of the new one.
In many ways, the death of my early 2008 Macbook Pro also marks the end of an era when it comes to upgradeability. With the old Macbook Pro, I could easily remove and replace the RAM and battery (which I did). I also swapped out the plunky stock hard drive with a wickedly fast OWC Mercury solid state drive, something I can’t even fathom ever doing on a new Mac portable.
Though the old machine held its own for a while, it did exhibit signs of old age. The built-in DVD player worked intermittently at best, while the third party Newertech battery was exhibiting signs that it, too, was not long for this world.
Had this little Macbook Pro not passed on so suddenly, I planned to recondition it with a fresh battery and give it a fresh format and OS install. This would have been Aarti’s “new” Mac, taking her up from an even more ancient (but still working) 2006 model Macbook Pro.
But it was not meant to be.
So what becomes the fate of my early 2008 Macbook Pro?
For now, it will sit on my shelf. At some point, I will probably cannibalize the solid state drive it houses and repurpose it as a backup drive for my new Macbook Pro. But I’m not ready to do that just yet.
Goodbye old friend.
-Krishna
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