<p>My 13" Macbook is about to turn 4 years old. I no longer have Apple Care, although my local Apple store replaced my failed hard drive for no charge while out of warranty. While I am still running Leopard, other than a dimmed screen, a battery that doesn’t hold a charge for more than 45 minutes, the computer seems to work just fine. </p>
<p>I am not able to update my iPhone 3G, as I do not have the latest version of itunes, because I am only running Leopard. If I had a money tree in my back yard, I would purchase a new iPhone as well as a new Macbook, but that isn’t going to happen!</p>
<p>Does it pay to upgrade the Macbook to Snow Leopard so that I can update my iPhone and itunes? There is no need to get a new phone if I don’t have Snow Leopard and I can’t update my current phone without Snow Leopard. It seems like spending the $129 to upgrade to Snow Leopard makes sense, but I hate to spend the money and have the computer die in the near future.</p>
<p>I know Mac last longer that other computer, but how long do most laptops live? My concern is the screen that is a bit dim, but nothing that I can’t deal with. Do I wait until this one crashes before investing in a new one; even though I really want a new computer ;-)</p>
<p>Are you sure that you need Snow Leopard to update itunes? My D does not have Snow Leopard and so far as I know she can update her iphone and use itunes fine (and I do think I would hear if there was a problem). I will also caution you that when my D installed Snow Leopard, it was a complete nightmare. And her Mac is only 2 years old. The tech guys eventually just advised her to uninstall Snow Leopard and restore her settings. Thankfully that worked but Snow Leopard messed up everything–itunes and most importantly things she had saved in Word.</p>
<p>my four year old macbook (running tiger!) is still working— but I wouldn’t put any more money into it. 4 years is pushing the life of a laptop, and there’s a good chance that it could die at any time. Without applecare, any repair is not really worth it. If you have the money, then it’s not crazy to buy a new computer instead of reinstalling the operating system on the current one.</p>
<p>My next-to-last Macbook was quite old when I gave up on it. It didn’t die catastrophically, it sort of faded away, becoming slower and slower at running current software until I couldn’t stand it anymore. It was probably about the age of yours when I gave up on it.</p>
<p>My most recent Macbook half-died when I accidentally broke the screen by hitting it with the metal end of the puppy’s leash. The puppy was also (indirectly) responsible for me having to have some minor surgery on my finger, so the Macbook has been added to his maintenance costs. It was 3 or 4 years old and was still able to run up-to-date software. We did add more memory to it a couple of years ago; maybe this is an issue for you? The upside of the puppy leash misadventure is that I now have a Macbook Air, the small one, and it is quite wonderful.</p>
<p>On my macbook, I have replaced the fan, hard drive and battery in that order and it moves on…I at one time used it as my main computer and hooked it up to a screen. Now I use it when I need a laptop at work. It runs on updated software.</p>
<p>Just replaced DDs 2004 macbook (no clue which animal) and it has been painfully difficult to use for at least a year…I would not pay much for an OS at 4 years</p>
<p>snowball, my younger sister has a macbook and her battery was only lasting about a half hour or so so she bought a new one and it’s good as new again. Maybe you could price that if you want a longer battery life. They tend to lose charge over time.</p>
<p>my previous 15" powerbook (now called macbook pro) lasted from 2004-2010. I got a new one last summer. The battery died on my old on after maybe 5 years? It still worked if it was plugged in, but if you bumped the wire the computer would shut off since it didn’t have any power.</p>
<p>I meant to say I am running Tiger, not Leopard, so I am behind by two operating systems. </p>
<p>While I don’t have much life on my battery, the laptop works fine plugged in. Because I mainly use the computer at home it isn’t a big deal, although it would be nice to do work away from electricity every now and then!</p>
<p>My fear is as soon as I put money into a new OS and maybe a new battery, something will go wrong that won’t be worth the repair. My husband and I each have a laptop with no desktop or spare computer at home. His laptop which is a PC is in worst shape than mine, but he hates change. He is going to stick with his aging laptop until it blows up; then he will be angry that he has to go to Windows 7!</p>
<p>We have two Macbooks. Jealous that they replaced your hard drive when they didn’t replace mine (although they have replaced the cracked case twice because it’s a known issue with them. I should have insisted but I’m glad I didn’t.</p>
<p>My hard drive died three weeks after I decided to back it up. The Apple Store would replace it with a 160 gig loaded with Leopard for about $175. But they conceded I could get a bigger drive with 320-500 gigs for less than a hundred at MicroCenter. I upgraded to the 320 ($65) which was faster and put on Snow Leopard. Also replaced the battery because it had twice the number of “cycles” as expected and wasn’t holding a charge longer than 45 minutes. The hard drive took ten minutes to install (most of which was looking for my tiny screwdrivers to take the carrier off the old hard drive). It installs inside the battery case.</p>
<p>Now the computer runs well and the new battery stays charged for several hours even while streaming Netflix and working on files.</p>
<p>So if it’s not broke - do some minor upgrades and you’ll be fine. We bought a new Macbook Pro for my daughter (the low end one) and it doesn’t run much better than what I’ve got.</p>
<p>A word of warning. If you plan to upgrade always wait until summer. That’s when Apple usually runs an educational deal which pairs the laptop (at the educational price) with a free Ipod, etc. Also a free printer. ID required at the Apple Store, no ID required online - just log on to the educational store and select your college or high school to get the pricing.</p>
<p>Note: Snow Leopard was a required upgrade - we surprised our youngest with the newest iTouch and it doesn’t work without Snow Leopard (sigh).</p>
<p>“I know Mac last longer that other computer…”</p>
<p>LOL, so much for Mac’s apparent longevity. Do not get me wrong, I have nothing agianst either species, but I was lobbied hard to get Macs for someone because “they last longer than that other computer”… If yours is falling apart after only 4 years of use, sigh… I have something to look forward to! I’m typing this on a 4-yr old Dell which still works great; however, next to it sits DH’s Dell that is going to be as useful as a doorstop in a couple of months at the ripe age of 1.5 years! :eek: But it was dirt cheap.</p>
<p>snowball, I think you need to bite the bullet and get a new Mac. Patching up the old one sounds very much like that folk tale (Italian?) about the poor old man and his wife who had only one skirt…</p>
<p>I’ve got a seven-year-old Toshiba laptop that is still going very strong (two-hour battery life), and an ASUS netbook used daily for several years. I don’t have a sense that Macbooks last longer, given my kids’ experiences, with bad hard drives, and other problems.</p>
<p>Supposedly, you can only install a Snow Leopard upgrade from Leopard. However, I am pretty sure that unofficially the Snow Leopard upgrade will work from Tiger. My daughter has an older Macbook with Tiger and I’m planning to do this upgrade on hers. You (and i will check it again too before I do the actual upgrade) can verify this online on some of the Mac forums. I will probably do just an archive and install upgrade, rather than a clean install. The Snow Leopard upgrade version costs $30 as opposed to $129 for the regular version. </p>
<p>Other than wanting to update your iPhone, the Tiger version of the OS should continue to work fine for most other purposes. Since you have an older Macbook, the battery is user replaceable (unlike the battery in the newer unibody Macbooks). I think a battery is good for about 1000 full re-charge cycles, so if you probably need to replace it after 4 years of use.</p>
<p>I havent read whole thread, my oldest is using her sisters old macbook.
I think she has leopard but IMO, it would be worth it to upgrade-(clean install), because snow leopard is much more efficient.( but that would depend on your processor etc.)</p>
<p>Sorry to confused anyone; I can not do an upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard, it will be a clean install. There are too many stories of computers crashing with just a simple; I will stick with a clean install if I decide to do this. </p>
<p>My daughter’s Dell that is 8 years old is currently being used by my son to download games and music; he doesn’t want viruses on his computer. Her 5 year old Dell that had a drink poured on it and didn’t boot up for months, now is used to play some online soccer game continuously. It might be nice to keep this Mac as a back up!!</p>
<p>I scanned the thread and saw that one other member mentioned this. I would question itunes not updating due to your os. Itunes runs on many computers regardless of the os and continues to update. I would also urge you to hold out for the next gen iphone. The Verizon version of the iphone 4 has an adjustment to the exterior antenna that caused so many problems in the AT&T version. Look for this to change in the next gen AT&T version. If history repeats it will be announced in June with availability in August. It’s a while to wait, yes, but you do NOT want to get tied to the iphone 4 with the glitches it currently has (and Apple clearly knew about).</p>
<p>Having said this, I’ll point out the obvious that even the best of us miss. Make sure you are backing up your hard drive on an external drive in the event your computer does go belly-up. You can get a 1TB slim external drive for about $100 (watch for sales at Staples or Office Depot…free shipping over $50). Well worth the investment!</p>
<p>We had replaced several things on one of our old macs, and it does total up. The new macbook air has a price tag of around 1k, which sounds good to me, in terms of value. Of course if you are handy, you can take the suggestions above - replace battery and hard drive, and operating system, and you essentially rebuild your computer for less than half the price. Make 2 backups on time machine on two external drives or use an on line back up so that you can reinstall your data - just in case.</p>
<p>Fendergirl - you know the old adage- there are two types of people - those who have lost data, and those who will lose data. I have lost my whole computer a few times…</p>