MacBook (2007)
First Life
This was the first computer I ever bought, in July of 2007, using middle school graduation money. It was my only computer from 2007 until 2011, when I used high school graduation money to buy a 21.5" iMac for college. It was still in heavy rotation for going to class until it marked as new OS obsolete by Apple in June 2013 while I while attending my first WWDC on scholarship. At that point, I bought a MacBook Air to keep up with the latest software, and the MacBook spent the next decade in closets.
Second Life
In March of 2023, I became deeply interested in both trying to use linux as a daily operating system and repurposing old technology through my time spent in Merveilles. I dug out this MacBook and tried to figure out if I could run modern linux on it... and I could. This computer became my playground for cutting my teeth on linux while my /iMac (2020) continued to serve daily driver purposes. Eventually, I would install linux on my /MacBook Pro (2015) in the Summer of 2023, and that took over as my daily machine, before this computer was again promoted to primary for that Fall and Winter. In mid-winter 2024, I bought my second new battery for this laptop (along with a replacement for /MacBook Pro (2006), and they both began to share primary usage duties.
/macbook-2007 Stream
November 8, 2023
/stream /technology /permacomputing /repair /macbook-2007
Disassembled the /MacBook (2007) today to give a proper internal dusting and a fresh application of thermal paste. Even after all the work done on the /MacBook Pro (2006), I still find myself using the /MacBook (2007) as my daily driver now, because it's smaller, lighter, and the plastic doesn't burn my legs as much as the metal case on the Pro. However, I've noticed that the CPU still seems to get quite hot, and I figured the 16 year old thermal paste wasn't helping much.
After the application, I noticed that peak thermals were much lower: ~68C as opposed to the ~80C I was seeing before when doing something like compiling a rust binary. The stable idle temperature during a work session hasn't changed much (~58C), but it takes much longer to reach that temperature (about 20 minutes of working), and temperature recovery back to baseline after a spike is also noticably better.
Hopefully this preventative maintenance extends the life of this computer even further than it was on track to go.