Found a 17 inch Macbook Pro

[chopper]

In my closet this morning. Someone must have given this unit to me. I don't remember ever using it. It's still running 10.6.8.

The screen is beautiful.

[chopper]

[GGD]

How's the battery? Could probably use some more RAM, 2GB is pretty tight. Maybe an SSD too.

[chopper]

Battery is toast.

I keep trying to run software update on it but it stalls at the restart.

We have a new homeless shelter in town with a day room for users to try and find solutions. I wonder if they need a laptop that can't be unplugged.

[GGD]

Maybe try setting the date back about 10-15 years and turn off automatic date/time adjustments in case the update problem is related to an expired security certificate.

[Speedy]

I still have mine but it is slow. I could install an SSD but I doubt if it would get anymore use with one. My main use was while on my treadmill desktop during the winter but now that we have become annual snowbirds both the 17” and the treadmill sit unused.

[Lew Zealand]

That is a 2008 Santa Rosa Macbook Pro which is rare as hen's teeth nowadays as those are the ones with the failing Nvidia GPU in them. BTW those GPUs are just as infamous on the PC/Win side of things, same failure mode.

Edit: otherwise those are decent machines, I still use a 2009 (no GPU failures that year) 15" MBPro as a scanning station. 250GB SSD, 8GB RAM, OS 10.11 and Firefox ESR 78.15 make it a reasonable one-use piece of hardware.

[clay]

download from a different computer a self-contained installer of whatever the newest OS that computer will run (or at least the newest self-contained non App Store OS....which might be Sierra 10.12 according to https://support.apple.com/en-us/102662 ). Put it on a USB stick or something and copy it to the 17". Install it. Then, if it can take something newer, click one of those links and download/upgrade to whatever the newest version is from the App Store. Done.

These older machines running older OSes are really only useful (in my experience) as a self-contained, basically non-internet-using machine. I have a 2011 iMac that I use for authoring and printing on DVDs. Runs 10.6, but it's a little tricky getting files over onto it -- I use my Synology as the intermediary between it and my newer computers (to pass video files, disc art, etc). Works fine, but is a bit of a pain.

[pqrst]

And doesn’t it have a pcmcia card slot? I used it and it still had uses for downloading sone older cf memory cards used in digital video cameras.

[chopper]

It downloaded a bunch of updates. Thanks for the help.

It's a real drag if it has to go on the recycle pile. It's almost new in terms of condition.

I wonder if it will run a version of Winders?