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Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
0:31 Sponsor: Skillshare
1:31 Why Repair?
2:15 Repairs that aren't worth it
3:00 What's usually easily repairable in a laptop?
3:35 What's wrong with this laptop?
5:25 How the repair went
6:15 Cost to Repair VS Buying a new one
9:14 Conclusion
This Macbook air is 8 years old and is on its last legs, it takes 30min. to boot. If you’re still holding onto a laptop that is this old, or behaving this poorly, you’re probably thinking about just getting rid of it. But what if I told you, you can make it feel like new, and maybe, even better than even new computers.
Okay, you’ve probably guessed by now, that I don’t mean that this laptop, would ever perform as good as a $900 laptop in 2022. But old laptops could make a great cheap laptop and provide way more functionality than you think, even for some power users. Why buy your kid a 200 or 300 laptop to do his schoolwork on, when you can just fix your old laptop up for even less than that. At 6 years old, little Timmy can’t even count that high.
First, I want to acknowledge that some repairs just aren't worth it. Right now on Ebay, these macbook airs are going for almost $200. Replacing something, or doing a time consuming repair could be expensive, stressful and not worth the benefits of the repair. And if the repair isn’t worth it, find a worthy tech recycling place to get rid of it or sell it on ebay for scraps or something.
What’s wrong with this MacBook air? Well, over a year ago the internal ssd on this laptop pooped out. So it’s been running MacOS on this tiny little baby flash drive. But because of this the laptop takes forever to notice the flash drive when booting up and decides to take 30 minutes at a time to make up its mind before finally booting from this drive. Also the battery is 8 years old and desperately needs replacing.
So when it comes to repairing this MacBook air, we need to resolve two major issues, the SSD and the Battery. From there with quick google searches, we can see that these tasks aren’t hard at all. With the biggest caveat, Apple uses proprietary NVME SSDs, making it more confusing and more expensive to purchase the correct SSD. Apple isn’t the only one who uses proprietary stuff instead of just going industry standard but they are the most well known one to do so. Luckily SSDs in general have decreased in price, and manufacturers have had plenty of time creating old macbook compatible SSDs and converters for existing SSDs. A 256gb SSD cost me $43 and a new battery? Only cost $65. Places like Microcenter may have stock of the battery for your particular laptop, but you can also find them on Ifixit or Amazon. I mainly use Amazon as a last resort for something like this. Of course Apple uses proprietary screws on their bottom panel too, so you’ll need the right tools for that. You could buy a screwdriver with the right bit, or something like the Ifixit Mako Driver kit, which actually comes with all the common weird screws that tech companies use. So the total cost of this repair will range between 110-150 depending on if you need to get the right screwdrivers.
So, the problem with repairing a laptop is that it’s old, was used as someone’s daily driver machine for years, and has some cosmetic wear and tear some might say “adds character”. But I translate to meaning there’s a higher chance something goes wrong or dies because it’s been through a lot, and at that point it might not be worth repairing again. Basically, it’s a ticking time bomb and we’ll never know when it will need another repair. Also software updates. This Mac can’t download the latest Mac OS. Luckily, these intel macs can run windows 11 with some work, or Chrome OS Flex, a cleaner version of ChromeOS which basically turns the laptop into a netbook. And lastly there’s IO. This is the usb ports, hdmi ports, stuff like that. With older machines you may get ports that were common then but no one uses anymore now. I think these upgrades give the laptop an extra 2-3 years of life, and if you’re using it for documents, emails, or for kids to do homework, it’s more than enough.
Even as a power user you can run home assistant, a plex media server, use it as a ingest station for video. And, can be used to remote into more powerful machines while you’re away from them.