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Question

2008 macbook worth spending money on?

May 30, 2012 8:23AM PDT

I have a late 2008 2.4 GHz core 2 duo macbook. I was looking into upgrading the ram to 4gb and buying a 128gb SSD for it to prolong it's life. I can get the RAM and SSD from amazon for about $150. Now, I don't really need the machine to perform any really strenuous tasks. Just mostly video streaming and web surfing.

So my question is would the investment be worth the upgrade? Or should I just save my money? I'll be getting a new iMac when they come out, but I thought it'd be nice to have another option to view media away from my computer desk. So should I pull the trigger to keep my laptop alive, or just let it ride off in to the sunset?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
A friend had that model
May 30, 2012 8:56AM PDT

They did add the RAM and felt it was a good move. I'd do that and skip the SSD for now. But that's me.

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Answer
I'd agree with Bob
May 30, 2012 7:25PM PDT

I'd agree with Bob. Don't bother with the SSD. The kinds of tasks you're talking about are not going to be helped to any worthwhile degree by a SSD, and in fact, might actually wear out the SSD faster. As for the RAM alone, it's hard to go too wrong with an upgrade that's $100 or less, and I would think 4GB of DDR3 RAM would certainly fall under that heading. That system is probably still worth the better part of $1,000, so you're looking at investing maybe 10% or less of it's current market value in an upgrade. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Now if you were looking to spend 50-75%+, I'd have to question it, but 10-15% is very reasonable if you figure it will add an extra 1-2 years of useful life onto the machine.