Upgrading Old Macbook Pro (Pros and Cons)

Any mac snobs out there that know their stuff? I'm pretty capable on my mac, but its a 2007 (around when they first came out with the intel core duos). And over the past year or so, its been crashing while viewing internet videos, burning dvds, yesterday even crashed while burning cds!

I know its old, but I can't afford a new one, and with all the great *stolen* software I have on this one, I wanna keep it. I read online that you can certainly upgrade it, but there are certain processors that I need to do math with in order to get it to work since its an older model. Anyone hear about that?

I'm suspecting it just can't take the technology on the internet anymore (thats why it crashes-fan speed kicks up, CPU usage gets high and BAM shuts off) but it shouldn't be doing that for just burning a cd from itunes. So I thought a battery replacement would help (heard if its an old one-it could heat up and cause crashes) I put an icepack under it while burning, and it stayed cool and CPU usage stayed pretty low, but it still crashed.

I'd love to sit down with a genius on this, but you know how expensive that can be when my apple care plan ran out and I thought I was too good to keep paying to wait for someone ELSE to help me.

Thoughts would be appreciated.
 

Vumad

Super Hero, with a cape!
Location
St. Pete, FL
Any mac snobs out there that know their stuff? I'm pretty capable on my mac, but its a 2007 (around when they first came out with the intel core duos). And over the past year or so, its been crashing while viewing internet videos, burning dvds, yesterday even crashed while burning cds!

I know its old, but I can't afford a new one, and with all the great *stolen* software I have on this one, I wanna keep it. I read online that you can certainly upgrade it, but there are certain processors that I need to do math with in order to get it to work since its an older model. Anyone hear about that?

I'm suspecting it just can't take the technology on the internet anymore (thats why it crashes-fan speed kicks up, CPU usage gets high and BAM shuts off) but it shouldn't be doing that for just burning a cd from itunes. So I thought a battery replacement would help (heard if its an old one-it could heat up and cause crashes) I put an icepack under it while burning, and it stayed cool and CPU usage stayed pretty low, but it still crashed.

I'd love to sit down with a genius on this, but you know how expensive that can be when my apple care plan ran out and I thought I was too good to keep paying to wait for someone ELSE to help me.

Thoughts would be appreciated.

It crashes because MAC is trash. I have an apple iPhone and I like it. My wife has a Macbook pro and she likes it. They do work good.

However, I tried to use my wife's old macbook and it would not work. It is newer than my HP laptop but it absolutely will not work. So, I went on the venture of some research. I found the result that (sorry I forget the editions, dates, etc) the older macs no longer receive updates. Her old Macbook will not run Flash. Since most websites use flash, safari crashes every time we attempt to go to a site with flash. There are no longer updates for that OS, and Mac prevents that hardware from being updated to a newer OS (I want to say it has leapord and you need snow lepord to run the updates that support flash? I forget.)

In anycase, I have done a little homework and I know why Apple is so amazing. They design their hardware and software to work together specifically. This leads to a very stable system that performs well. However, it eventually becomes cost and functionally prohibitive to continue to provide support for these older systems. They just discontinue support and your technology becomes obsolete, and not the PC version where something better is available, but the Mac version where it's give us more money because your :):):):) doesn't work anymore.

My 7 year old PC may not have been as good as my wife's 5 year old mac, but now, my PC is running win 7 and I use it every day (right now even), and her mac is sitting in a box of trash, that I may occassionally use for it's dated video editing software.

Have to give Mac that at least. The windows 7 movie maker still wont edit gopro videoes, but the 5 year old mac will.
 
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hey so if your mac white screens and shuts down its most likely your logix board (which is pretty much the entire thing ~900 to fix) its caused from excessive overheating, and i believe 2008 was the first year of MBP i believe
 

King Kang

Never enough tray time...
Location
Cary, NC
My $300 hp laptop from 2010 still runs like a champ. PC laptops at that price are essentially disposable. 2007 is like 100 years ago as far as computers are concerned. If I were you, I'd get a newer computer and transfer or re-acquire your software. The AppleStore online and cowboom.com should have a wide selection of refurbished Macs if you want to stick with Apple.
 
Thanks everyone :) I know mac is kind of a religion, you don't have to be afraid to say it . . . Its a friggin CULT! I just get so frustrated with PCs because I'm easily agitated and stupid. So having a macintosh hold my hand is comforting ;)

I got it fixed, and while I did, my boyfriend got me a newer one. What a guy :D
 
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