Thoughts on running a MacBook Pro 7,1 in 2024

Firstly, the background. The MacBook Pro 7,1 is a 13” model from April 2010. Even in 2010 it wasn’t exactly a speedy machine with an Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 (dual-core, 2.4GHz), 4GB of DDR3-1066, a 250GB mechanical harddrive, and graphics from an nVidia GeForce 320M that is shared with system memory. The ensuing 14 years have made it abundantly apparent it is an old computer with antiquated design. Having said that, mine is in slightly better spec than that.

I got mine when I was still at university. Previously, I had been running a MacBook Pro 15” from 2007 when Apple had recently switched to Intel hardware. That machine suffered the fate which was, tragically, so common to laptops (and in particular Apple ones) running GeForce 8000 series chipsets, that it died from chronic overheating. I was in a bind and needed a replacement quickly and ended up with this 13” model that is still running today, aside from the battery of course.

I’ve made many upgrades since. Firstly, I doubled the RAM to 8GB. It’s on the lower end for a system today but it still manages fairly well on that front so long as I don’t expect a lot out of it. Secondly, that harddrive was replaced long ago as well. It’s had a few different upgrades because of how much has changed. I know one of them was to a hybrid drive from Seagate that had the majority of storage as a traditional mechanical drive but with a small, I believe it was 4GB, cache of fast NAND storage for frequently accessed files. That drive is also long gone and in its stead is currently a 120GB SSD. It’s a slower drive, and rather small, but for such an old machine it works fairly well.

Much of the rest of the bones for the computer are still as they are, however. The processor is still that slow Core 2 Duo, there’s still an old Apple Superdrive (DVD/CD combo drive), and the display is particularly noticeable in its age for its poor viewing angles and paltry 1280x800 resolution. It’s still decently bright, but the contrast suffers greatly at any angle that is outside the few degrees of vertical zone that it is designed to be seen from. It’s sharp enough from about 0.5m away but anything closer than about 0.3m it becomes very apparent just how low the resolution really is.

Then, there’s the elephant in the room: software. Officially, the last version of macOS to be supported is version 10.13 High Sierra which came out in 2017 and was last updated in 2020 with 10.13.6. I wouldn’t recommend using software that out of date if you plan on running that machine online. That means that I have a few options to consider. I could force it to run newer versions of macOS, but I don’t really feel like fighting to do that on a computer that was already struggling in some respects in 10.13.

I could, I suppose, run Windows 10 on it. That’s also a dying operating system though and also is heavier than I’d want to use on this machine. So, I opted for the obvious choice of a lighter distribution of Linux. Currently, I’m running Xubuntu 24.04. I do prefer both Gnome and KDE but Xfce does have a lighter footprint and genuinely feels snappier on this computer versus either of those. Perhaps Cinnamon would work. Or if I really wanted to lighten the load go back to a standby I used in the early 2000s with Fluxbox or Blackbox. I don’t really want to go quite that spartan in my interface so I’ll take the middle option that Xfce provides.

Another reason I went with Xubuntu in particular is that this laptop has a particularly annoying wireless card. It’s an old Realtek model that doesn’t have open source drivers. It’s 802.11n as well, so it’s already slow but is even worse with the rather crummy Realtek chipset rather than Intel, or even Broadcom. I don’t want to put any more money into it because of its age so here is where I land. The Ubuntu repositories have a working driver for the network card so I’ve stuck with it.

Relatedly, there’s the graphics. It’s so old and out of date that the only driver option is to use the open source Nouveau drivers. They do work, albeit with lackluster performance and quirks should I feel the bizarre need to run 3D games on a computer that struggles to run anything much beyond Half-Life or Quake 3. It never was really gaming capable but the near decade-and-a-half since have made that point particularly glaring.

Where it does work is in doing what I’m doing right now: light usage. Things like basic web browsing, writing text documents, and even the occasional (if laggy) message over Discord work serviceably well. Without a battery, it is no longer very portable (amusing note: the bezels are so large that it’s actually physically larger than my M2 14” MacBook Pro). I can just as easily take it anywhere as before, easier even without the weight of the battery, but it can’t be brought anywhere without dangling the cable and power supply along with it.

Would I recommend anyone pick up such an old machine and use it for anything other than basic computing? Oh, no, absolutely not! Even updating the software can be tedious compared to anything even half its age. If anything, it’s bringing back memories of how it felt to use my netbook (MSI Wind if you’re curious) when this computer was new. The combination of low resolution, anemic processor, and overall sluggish system responsiveness, it’s not so much fun to use as much as an adventure in patience. A reminder of how things once were.

That said, if you do have a computer from that era that does still work, keeping it running for the occasional task versus sending it to become ewaste is a good thing. It can be a nice platform for experimentation. Try out Linux if you never have. Use it as a dedicated machine to help you with research in your hobby room. Hell, use it to stream music in that room. It’s a nice machine for little tasks that you’re not stuck with it for daily use. And, while it doesn’t do any miracles, having it run a modern but lightweight distribution of Linux helps it maintain that usefulness for a while longer. Old machines don’t need to go to the dump. Another option is home automation or network storage. There are many options for old computer that would otherwise be sent off to be destroyed despite still being functional. At the very least, I think old computers should see some life through learning about computers as a whole. Even with as much has changed, the basics are the same.