Andy Tang

iTrader: (3)

Is it possible to get a useable secondhand MacBook for less than £100?

If I needed it for:

- Internet
- iChat
- Viewing photos from the digital camera

I'm not shy with dismantling and upgrading laptops, so if more memory or larger hard drive is needed, so be it!

I don't know the differences between the various models and what a useable specification would be.

Any help would be greatfully recieved

Thanks
Andy

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

short answer.............................no

these things hold their value

Markus

When you say MacBook, do you specifically mean a MacBook or an older Apple laptop, for example, an iBook G4?

If you really are talking about a MacBook, then you will be lucky to find one for less than £500.

If you just need to run Mac OS X, ie; no dual boot, then you could look at the iBooks, the predecessor to the MacBook. I've got a 1.33Ghz PowerPC G4 iBook running OS X 10.5, 768MB RAM and 120GB hard drive, and it's more than happy enough to surf, iChat and view photos from my camera. Upgrading the memory is very easy, the hard drive is tricker, requiring a lot of dismantling, but it's fairly simple to do, just a little time consuming.

Andy Tang

iTrader: (3)

Sorry chaps, I meant iBook, thanks for the correction Markus!

Is that sort of spec do-able for around the £100 mark? And a quick look round ebay says no!

Looks like my plan to make a "Hackintosh" will now take over!

RichB

i know someone with a clam shell iBook, what is your minimum spec?
I think Leopard needs an 867mhz processor G4 min (without tweaking the installer although I think Marcus may have posed something about that previously), I'm not sure this is upto spec... It would run Tiger though (10.4) I have old Powerbook G3s that run Tiger OK.

Markus

Ok, so iBook, that's something. Looking at the prices though, the iBook and MacBook seem to be fairly close in prices at around the £500 mark, which is out of budget, but something could pop up. Might be worth checking Apple Refurbished and seeing if there is anything there.

Rich is quite correct about the min requirements for 10.5, but as also said, one can modify things to work around that. The only requirement I'd stick hard and fast to is the min memory requirement, which is 512MB, the installer will simply fail at some point if you have less than 512, but realistically I'd go for 1GB if possible.

AllanB

Hi Andy I'm tapping away now on my iBook G4 knows its worth far more that £100 keep an eye on ebay prices roughly £200-£350. Thats said I think you may see some of the older machines on ebay 800Mhz or similar just watch out for really small hard disks on some of the really old machines.

You can pick up an iBook G3 for very little these days but the performance will be noticably lower but fine for surfing the web.


AllanB

GaryK

Double edged sword though, if you're the owner means it wont drop thru the floor price wise like a win lappy, Ive got a 5 year old Macbook G4 that cost me £900 (i got a deal I think the right price was about 1100) and on ebay they still reach £3-400, if that was a win lappy I would be binning it or paying someone to take it off my hands.