or else what? this is my trusty old apple macbook pro. it's a mid-2009 model, but i bought it onfebruary 10th, 2010, brand new. it was my first macintosh computer. this was the cheapest 15-inch model they hadat my local electronics store and was cheaper than the current 15-inch macbook pro. this unit here has a 2.53 ghz intel core 2duo processor and it came with 4 gb of ram and a 250 gb 5400 rpm mechanical hard drive. this is the original hard drive that camewith it.
i took it out for some important reason thati'll explain in a moment. and in my memories box i have the originalram that came with it. no. i have a lot of memories. well, not really. the original ram that came with it is 4 gb,two sticks each with 2 gigs, by samsung. i'm gonna safely put away my memories box,because i wanna keep my memories safe. it also has an nvidia geforce 9400m graphicscard with 256 mb of video ram. when i bought it, it came with mac os x 10.6snow leopard, but this computer was around
before snow leopard came out, and if you boughtit around that time it would have come with leopard 10.5. it's possible to downgrade this computer toleopard even if it came with snow leopard, because the hardware has been the same sinceit came out in june 2009 until they updated it in june 2010, i think. i've used this as my main computer for years,until may 2015, when i bought the hp 15 laptop i already did a video about. of course, when this macbook was brand new,i loved using it more than anything else, like most people who get their first mac.
of course, over the years, the novelty woreoff, but i was able to do some upgrades on it as shown in the video title, which makethis computer still quite capable and fun to use today. the saying "once you buy a mac, you nevergo back" doesn't apply to me, as i now have an hp laptop. i did install mac os x on it but i use windows10 about 90% of the time. but anyway, back to this macbook. during those five years, this macbook hasbeen through some upgrades, both hardware- and software-wise.
i already talked about the original hard driveand ram, but i didn't talk about the new hardware i put in it. the reason i took off this hard drive is becauseit died in november 2011. if i plug it in, it just makes clicking soundsand the computer doesn't recognize it. i wanted to get an ssd, but back then theywere still quite expensive, and so i got a western digital scorpio blue 500 gb hard drive,also 5400 rpm, even though it seemed quite faster than this thing here. and i've had it for the longest time. however, there were some problems with thenew hard drive.
the efi firmware on this computer noticesthat it's an unsupported hard drive, and for some reason it would become unbearably slow. like, i tried to install mac os x on it, wheni got the new hard drive, and it was forever stuck at the "installing" phase. the problem was that the efi firmware on thiscomputer didn't like the new hard drive, even if it didn't have anything unusual. what i had to do was downgrade it from 1.7to 1.6. i'll put a link to download this old efi firmwarein the description. it's a cdr image file.
you burn it using disk utility on mac os x,then you boot from it. it will make some scary low-pitched beeps,but then it will restart with the old efi firmware. but with the old efi firmware, no versionof mac os x newer than 10.8.2 will work. suddenly, the video is less grainy, becausei switched from 1080p 60 fps to 720p 30 fps, because i don't, i'm gonna run out of spacereal soon. so, anyway, with the newer efi firmware, thehard drive is too slow to be usable, and with the new efi firmware i can't run anythingnewer than mac os x 10.8.3. for the longest time i was stuck with macos x 10.7 because i could fully upgrade that,
while i couldn't fully upgrade 10.8. recently, i downgraded it to snow leopard,because i like it better than lion, but a little bit after that i got something new. on july 12th, 2016, there was a big sale onamazon for amazon prime users. i wasn't one of them, but i signed up fora 30-day free trial and bought this solid state drive. it's a sandisk ssd plus, 240 gb. the price for this discounted was just belowthe non-discounted price of the 120 gb model of this, so i think it was a pretty good deal.
here it is, it's pretty glossy, but it's inplace of the original hard drive now. speaking of what's under this computer, ialso had to buy new replacement screws for the bottom cover because i lost the originalones, and i also had to replace the rubber feet, because they got lost over time. the rubber feet cost me €5. no one else gets ripped off like i do. i'm gonna screw the screws back in, but noton this video to save time, because i want to talk about some other upgrades i've doneto it. as seen in my hp stream 13 vs. macbook provideo, the power adapter cable ripped, so
i bought a new one. on amazon an original one was €40 comparedto €90 on the apple website, so that was another good deal, but it had nothing to dowith amazon prime. the power brick looks the same. it's this square shape, with the plug thatyou can ... take out, and you can put an extension cable, and it has these for wrapping the cordaround. this is a 60 w power adapter. this 15-inch macbook, 2.53 ghz mid-2009, isthe only 15-inch macbook which has a 60 w power supply.
all the other 15-inch macbooks, newer andolder, use an 85 w power supply. so maybe it's like a glorified 13-inch macbook,i don't know. oh well, it has worked well enough for me. the magsafe plug itself is different, though. it looks really cool, but ... but if you plugit in like this it covers the ethernet port, and it also barely covers the firewire port,even if i never use that, because i don't have any devices with firewire. plugging it in like this fixes the problem,but if you have it on a desk like this, it's gonna bend the cable quite a bit, so you haveto be careful.
the older style plug and the newer style plugin the current retina macbook pros has a t-shape with the cable that starts from here, whichi think is a better design, but oh well. the other ports in this computer on the leftside are a mini displayport, so you need an adapter for vga, hdmi or dvi, two usb 2.0ports, an sd card slot, a line-in jack, and a headphone jack. here's the button with the lights to checkthe battery level. and let's talk about the battery. this one, the battery i showed at the beginning,is the original battery, but it no longer holds a proper charge.
it only lasts for about 10 minutes, or maybe15 minutes. it's had more than 1500 charge cycles, eventhough i tried to be careful with it. and i don't understand this "warning: do notremove the battery.". like, why not? here's what it looks like on the other side. the replacement battery i got was by thiscompany called lizone. i don't know if it's pronounced lie-zone,or lee-zone. i would assume that the first part is an abbreviationof "lithium", but just like the anagram "gif", which is supposed to be pronounced "jif",but everyone pronounces "gift" without the
t, because the g stands for "graphics", wemay never know. also, we may never care. anyway, i got that replacement battery andi already installed it. ... the two 4 gb ram sticks by kingston, sonow this computer is maxed out at 8 gb of ram. replacing the battery isn't too hard: takeoff the bottom cover, and there are three screws here. the problem is that they're very particularpentalobe screws. the lizone battery came with some ... it didn'tcome with the ssd of course, it came with
a generic instruction manual, it doesn't tellyou how to take apart the macbook. it came with some screwdrivers. for example, i needed the phillips one totake off the bottom cover. it also came with a tri-wing, pentalobe t5and 6-points. the problem is none of those work for thosethree screws. it uses a very specific type of pentalobescrewdriver that unscrews screws only used to hold the battery on the 2009 macbook pro,that's how specific it is, the greedy bastards who try their hardest to lock you out of yourown shit that you paid your own goddamn money for.
i couldn't find the screwdriver i needed onamazon, and on ifixit it was €18 including shipping, which was too expensive for me. i found it on ebay for €3 plus €1 shippingfrom china. it took two weeks to arrive, but here it is,and this one worked perfectly, so i was able to unscrew the screws, take off the old battery,put in the new one, and put everything back in. so, to sum up, this computer has pretty muchall its upgradeable parts upgraded: new ssd, new battery, and more ram. i could have bought a bigger ssd, of course,but 240 gb was all i could afford, and again,
it was cheaper than the non-discounted versionof the 120 gb one. i don't have to install that much stuff onthis computer anyway, just my itunes library and some apps, but 240 gb is enough. i'll screw the bottom cover later. now i'll show you the other sides. on the front there's the thing to help youopen it, sleep light and infrared sensor for the apple remote. on the right side there's a kensington lockslot and a dvd-rw drive which apple calls superdrive.
it's slot-loading, the disc just slides inthere, and it doesn't support mini cds and mini dvds, it only supports the regular sizedcds and dvds. on the back there's nothing special. at the top it has a vga webcam, which isn'tvery good. about over here there's the microphone, andthere's the power button which is not built into the keyboard, because where the newermacs have a power button, this one has an eject button for the superdrive. this model has a glossy lcd with a resolutionof 1440*900. there's a model which has a matte screen witha gray bezel, but that was more expensive.
suddenly it's dark and grainy again. while 60 fps looks really cool, my oneplusone camera kinda makes it look a bit too grainy, so maybe it's best if i keep 30 fps on thisvideo. the keyboard has fared well over the years. it's a little worn out, but you can't reallynotice it. i like that it's also backlit, but i usuallykeep the backlight at the minimum, otherwise i turn it off completely. the trackpad is still a pleasure to use, especiallywith a few gestures, like two-finger scrolling, three fingers to go back and forward a pageon the web browser, and four fingers using
mission control. you can see i mentioned mission control andnot exposã©, which is in snow leopard. and that's because on the ssd i was able toinstall mac os x 10.11 el capitan, the newest version that this computer supports. it's still running the old efi firmware, butsomehow with this ssd, which is also supposed to be not supported by apple, it works, andi've had it for almost two months, so ... it's still working, so that's great. so, basically, it's a fully updated mid-2009macbook pro, well, except for the processor and the graphics card which are soldered intothe motherboard.
now we'll turn it on. i've already shown how fast it starts up,but i'll show you again. it's not the fastest thing in the world, butit's much faster than what it used to be, when i had the mechanical hard drive and lionor snow leopard, and for a brief time even mountain lion before 10.8.3. it took over three minutes to boot up, andabout ten minutes to finish loading all the startup apps. i should put a lighter background to get ridof some of the glare. we'll put the original mac os x el capitanwallpaper, and make the menu bar and dock
bright. a solid state drive doesn't just make a computermuch faster. it also makes it quieter because of no movingparts, the only noise this computer now makes is from the cpu fan, and it's much less fragile,you can shake the computer all you want and it won't risk being damaged, and also it'sresistant to magnetic fields. in fact, i turned off the sudden motion sensor,a feature macbooks have, which parks the hard drive heads if the computer detects suddenmovements, but on ssds this feature is useless so i turned it off. a very important feature that should be enabledon ssds is trim.
on any computer running windows 7 or newer,and on macs which come with ssds, it's enabled by default, but on macs with third-party ssds,it's not enabled automatically. you have to have mac os x el capitan or newer,but it's just a matter of typing this command on the terminal, and then rebooting your machinewhen it prompts to. when i first rebooted, after running thatcommand, the system information app still still said trim was disabled, but rebootinga second time enabled it. i'm not gonna show too much stuff running,this video has been long enough, but i can demonstrate that for a computer of this age,i'd say it can still do quite a lot of stuff. people are impatient because apple hasn'tcome out with macbook models with the newest
intel processors for a while, but if you upgradeyour old one with more ram, an ssd, and a new battery, like i did, you can squeeze moretime out of it. people consider computers from 2009 obsoleteand throw them out, but unless it's a really cheap model, or something with little upgradeability,with a little tender loving care there's no need to treat it as garbage. for example, old computers usually struggleat playing youtube videos, but this computer isn't old for that yet. it can still play youtube videos up to 1080pflawlessly, and this has nothing to do with the solid state drive.
because it's running the latest version ofmac os x, it can run the latest versions of popular apps, like imovie, garageband, pages,keynote, final cut pro, microsoft office, adobe creative butt, etc., even the latestversions of web browsers, like google chrome, safari, and firefox, and opera, and more. there are some limitations from the old hardware,for example, the bluetooth 2.1 antenna, which limits some features like apple continuity,but i've never found a need for it, and the feature where iphone calls are routed to otherdevices linked to your ibutt account actually works on this old mac. this computer can render video even at 1080p60 fps with no issues.
the only thing you need more of is patience. because, even if this intel core 2 duo iscapable, it's not very fast for intensive tasks like rendering video. if you want, this computer can also run windows. apple only supports windows 7 on this 2009model, but it can also run windows xp and anything newer, including 10. the mac os x install dvd came with boot campdrivers for windows xp, vista and 7. boot camp is the name of the assistant thathelps you set up a secondary partition and install windows.
it's in the utilities folder, and from thisboot camp assistant you can download more recent drivers, which you should do to havewindows on a mac working as well as possible. as i said, apple only supports windows 7,and when i tried to install the windows 7 drivers on windows 10 it complains that it'snot windows 7, but windows pops up with a compatibility wizard, then you just say theprogram didn't work, and it'll try some compatibility settings, which will make the drivers installwith no problems. well, actually, there is a problem. if you update the video card drivers, thebrightness will be stuck at the maximum, on windows, of course, not on mac os x.
a workaround to adjust the brightness withupdated video card drivers is to go to device manager, disable the video card, adjust thebrightness and then re-enable it. i've also tried a couple of linux distributionson here, but not many. i tried ubuntu 10.04 back in the day. recently i tried linux mint 18, which i hadto install in legacy bios mode for best results, just like windows. the only issue is that the wi-fi drivers don'twork, but the ethernet drivers do, so i just connected to the internet using ethernet,and went to the "additional drivers" settings to download and install the wi-fi drivers,which are pretty easy, it doesn't involve
using the terminal. however, even if linux is great, i don't havemuch use for it, so i got rid of my linux mint test install. unfortunately this computer isn't compatiblewith the newer version of mac os called sierra. however, you can install it using a patchtool, which will make it compatible, because macos sierra isn't too different under thehood. and it's compatible with some intel core 2duo macs, so if you use this patch, it will work just as well as el capitan, but for thesake of everything working perfectly in a supported manner, i'm keeping el capitan fornow.
even if you stick with el capitan, it willlast for years to come. hell, i was going to keep mac os x snow leopardon this computer forever, if i hadn't bought that ssd and discovered mac os x el capitanworks on it. unforunately, the newest version of googlechrome doesn't run on it, and the newest version of safari that it runs, version 5, is from2013, which is quite outdated for the new web standards, but the newest version of firefoxdoes run on mac os x snow leopard, at least for now. and the newest version of microsoft officeit runs is 2011, which is more than good enough. so, yeah, if you're stuck with snow leopard,you can still use it quite a bit.
of course, a lot of apps aren't compatibleanymore. i can't sync my ios 9 devices with snow leopard,because it's not compatible with itunes 12, so i'm glad el capitan works on this, andit's quite fast, too. the battery for now works okay. it's at 73% and 4 hours 14 minutes remaining. i discovered it doesn't last as long as theoriginal battery when it was new. but apple advertised this computer as havinga 7-hour battery life, and i never got up to that, not even on the original battery. 4 to 5 hours is an okay battery life for me.
this replacement lizone battery is not asgood as the original one, but it's new, so you don't have to keep the computer pluggedin all the time, like what i had to do when i had the old battery. so, that's my restored and upgraded macbookpro. of course, it's not really impressive, ifyou compare it to newer macs and newer computers in general, but for what it is, with theseupgrades, it works great and can still be used for quite a while. this computer has had a very good run andis still running great, even if it can't do cpu-intensive tasks fast, for basic functionalitylike web browsing, documents, music, and watching
movies, even though it's not a 16/9 display,it's great, so i don't see any reason to throw this computer away just because it doesn'thave an intel core i- processor or a retina display or it's 7 years old. i bought it 6 and a half years ago, but it'sa 7-year-old model. so, yeah, that's it about my 2009 macbookpro. thank you for watching.
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