The System is Down

[biggrumpy]

My poor Macbook Pro.  I bought it my second year of JET making it about 5-7 years old.  Those 7 years have seen it lugged back and forth over the Pacific a couple time, move around the US, and pretty much be on 24/7 in that time period

Comments

[willwrite4books]

I'm not exactly sure of your setup, but maybe you won't need to fix the optical drive. I know, I sound like Mike, but hear me out. If you connect your Macbook to a wireless network such that you can just transfer audio and video files to it when you want to listen to or watch something, you won't need discs.

And if you didn't want to bother with wireless nonsense (because as we know from failed New Year's Eve LAN parties, that's what it ends up being!) couldn't you just use a portable drive to copy videos and whatnot to the Macbook hard drive?

Those are just two solutions. Sure, either one will occasionally make for some extra steps such as ripping discs when they could've just been inserted into the optical drive, but it will also save you 500 bucks--money you could put toward a new system of some kind while your Macbook does its thing as your media center device.

[biggrumpy]

Yeah, the core components work fine, so replacement doesn't need to occur anytime soon, but the hardware is just old and its having trouble running games. Essentually 7 years is a long time to go without an major upgrade anyway.

[djstomp]

Another option is to buy a new internal drive and replace it yourself. Early MBPs are not super fun to work on, but it's possible. Take a look here.

[biggrumpy]

I could also by an external drive. Not optimal, but could work.

[djstomp]

Yeah, that would be the least expensive option.

[vicicast]

Great read! I wish you could follow up to this topic