Ok, this is going to make me look like
the world's biggest hypocrite...but yesterday evening I spotted an
advert on Gumtree for something I've been thinking about getting for
a while; even more so since I started with the whole photography
thing. I rang the number, chatted with the seller for a bit and then
agreed to go and have a look. I was impressed with what I saw at
first and was maybe slightly blinded by the whole 'image' thing
associated with the object...and with hindsight I'm not sure that I
did the right thing by purchasing it. Sure, it's pimped out with
extra technical gubbins that clearly aren't standard...but upon
getting it home and inspecting it closer I've discovered that it's
actually a little tatty and the 'L' key requires slightly more
attention than the other keys when typing.
What am I on about?
Well...I went and bought a used Macbook. It's a few years old and
suffers from 'light wear and tear': namely the palm rest has the
usual 'broken off' edges around the bottom and sides and the case
itself has a few cracks and scuffs here and there...oh, and the fan
gets a bit tasty when there are more than a few applications running
at once. Overall I'm quite impressed by it, but still I'm not overly
convinced that I should have just spent a bit more on a brand new
one. Only time will tell I guess.
Having dabbled with macs
extensively over the years (going back to the old LC III I convinced
my mum to buy way back in the mid nineties), I'm pretty au fay with
the various iterations of Mac OS X and this one came with Snow
Leopard already installed so I've been having a bit of a play around.
I'm liking the App Store and the new updated iTunes layout, and I've
found it relatively easy to set up new user accounts etc...I just
can't help but feel a little let down by the condition of the casing.
I didn't really know anything about the whole 'brittle body' Macbook
thing until I bought this one (I'm writing this on it now), but it
seems to be a common fault having looked around the various forums.
Weird. But anyway, it doesn't affect the running of the Macbook
itself, so I guess I should just stop wingeing.
So – the specs.
Well, it's a white Macbook from around 2008 I'd say. It has 4GB of
ram and a 500GB (not standard) hard disk. As I said earlier, it's got
Snow Leopard on it and all of the applications and free software
(GIMP, Chrome, OpenOffice etc) seem to run just fine, as does the
bluetooth, wifi etc. I paid £340 for it, which is a damned sight
cheaper than pretty much every other Macbook I've seen either on eBay
or Gumtree and the guy who sold it to me seemed fairly genuine and
happy to show me all the features and let me have a play around
before I handed over any cash. Like I said, I'm still undecided as to
whether I actually got a bargain yet (what with the cosmetic issues,
and the inability to upgrade to Mountain Lion), but again I got it
for a relative steal compared to what many other used Macbooks go
for. Ultimately, it will replace my HP Pavilion laptop which my
brother has expressed an interest in...I just hope I haven't just
wasted a fuck load of cash. On the plus side, it does look fucking cool and it has a remote control to switch music tracks and movies and shit in Front Row. Now all that I need to do is sit in the window of a Starbucks and look like an absolute twat while using it.