Late 2008 MacBook with New Life
I completed a fun project today.
My Late 2008 MacBook (MB466LL/A MacBook5,1) has been sitting in the closet powered off for quite a bit. Don't get me wrong, it still worked fine with MacOS El Capitan since I had frankenstein-ed it over the years.
I've put several different hard drives in it and upgraded the RAM since the stock 5400 RPM hard drive and 2 GB of RAM, but it has never really performed well with the used Samsung 850 EVO Solid State drive I bought a few years ago on Amazon.
I've started from scratch more times than I can count, but I was watching a video on YouTube the other day that inspired me to install Neverware's CloudReady: Home Edition on old faithful (10 years strong).
I knew Chromium OS was a thing (open source version of Chrome OS), but I had never heard of CloudReady. It was super easy to set up (much easier than Ubuntu, another form of Linux), and I have to recommend it for breathing life into an old machine. Most people don't need MacOS or even Windows these days. Your modern smartphone is probably more capable than that Windows Vista laptop from a decade ago, but Chromium can really work well on what would seem like an antiquated system.
8 GB of RAM is overkill on Chrome OS, but 2 GB on my Chromebook C720 isn't great when you're trying to run several tabs and extensions/applications. The Google Octane 2.0 scores on the MacBook running MacOS El Capitan were about 7000, but scored over 10000 with Chromium.
The battery on this device won't have great life, but it was never a very portable device compared to our 11.6" Chromebooks. This will be a more premium (older, familiar) experience that has new life with a better keyboard and trackpad. This same thing will work great for you on an older computer - PC or Mac. I'd recommend having a Solid State Drive (SSD) and 4 GB of RAM will be best for Chromium OS. You'll need an empty USB drive that is 8 GB or bigger to create a bootable drive to create your new (to you) computer.
So now I have a ChromeMacBook and this post was created with it.
My Late 2008 MacBook (MB466LL/A MacBook5,1) has been sitting in the closet powered off for quite a bit. Don't get me wrong, it still worked fine with MacOS El Capitan since I had frankenstein-ed it over the years.
I've put several different hard drives in it and upgraded the RAM since the stock 5400 RPM hard drive and 2 GB of RAM, but it has never really performed well with the used Samsung 850 EVO Solid State drive I bought a few years ago on Amazon.
I've started from scratch more times than I can count, but I was watching a video on YouTube the other day that inspired me to install Neverware's CloudReady: Home Edition on old faithful (10 years strong).
I knew Chromium OS was a thing (open source version of Chrome OS), but I had never heard of CloudReady. It was super easy to set up (much easier than Ubuntu, another form of Linux), and I have to recommend it for breathing life into an old machine. Most people don't need MacOS or even Windows these days. Your modern smartphone is probably more capable than that Windows Vista laptop from a decade ago, but Chromium can really work well on what would seem like an antiquated system.
8 GB of RAM is overkill on Chrome OS, but 2 GB on my Chromebook C720 isn't great when you're trying to run several tabs and extensions/applications. The Google Octane 2.0 scores on the MacBook running MacOS El Capitan were about 7000, but scored over 10000 with Chromium.
The battery on this device won't have great life, but it was never a very portable device compared to our 11.6" Chromebooks. This will be a more premium (older, familiar) experience that has new life with a better keyboard and trackpad. This same thing will work great for you on an older computer - PC or Mac. I'd recommend having a Solid State Drive (SSD) and 4 GB of RAM will be best for Chromium OS. You'll need an empty USB drive that is 8 GB or bigger to create a bootable drive to create your new (to you) computer.
So now I have a ChromeMacBook and this post was created with it.
Comments
Post a Comment