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Hey, I'm headed to college this fall and so my mom was going to let me buy a new Macbook 13 inch. The main reason she wanted to buy me a Mac was so that I don't play SC in college (I believe there are ways to get around it to play on one, but I need to stop playing anyway) Anyway, so we, my mom, my brother and sister, and I are heading to the Apple store at a mall and we saw these two people (mom and friend) we've known since I was very little. They lived in Atlanta but they came back up here and they've been very helpful to our church and to our family. (The family's been helping these refugees at our church and the mom bought my brother an iPad but wanted to get him an iPhone 4g) Anyway, so we see them and yell their name and my friend's mom is asking why we're here and my mom says so I can get a computer. The friend's mom is saying, oh I have a Mac I can give you! I was shocked and surprised, but didn't want to accept it right away and we all end up going to the Apple store and look around. Meanwhile, the mom kept saying that she will give her laptop to me for free, so after we look around we went to their house and I looked at it and she asked if I liked it. The computer was a iBook G4, 1.33gHz and >1 gig of memory and came out in 2005. Of course I didn't know how to respond, should I have been a man and said no it's ok, it's not good enough? But I said yes, I would have sounded like some snob if I didn't. It's really nice and stuff and she gave it to me. Free laptop right? Except that the specs of this is pretty disappointing, and is pretty old for a laptop. Should I go ahead and take this to college and see how it goes or just get a new computer when I can?
TLDR: I got a free laptop 1.33gHz with about 3/4 of a gig of memory, is it viable to use in college? Thanks
 
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Well it depends on what exactly you want out of it. If you can surf the internet, check your college email, register for classes, and do basic things (aka IM, or write word documents), you are fine. Take it! Worst case is having your parents go and buy you one and ship it to you 
If you want gaming... GL! :D
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United States24670 Posts
Just be honest and say something like "I don't think that can run some of the software I'm planning on using"?
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Were your parents going to buy you a comp or did you have to pay for it yourself?
You can always pawn it off if you were going to pay for it yourself.. and then just buy the new one you wanted.
Otherwise, if your parents were going to buy it looks like you're out of luck. Better get a job. :\
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I don't think telling him to pawn it is the best advice.
"Where's that laptop son?"
"Uhh... lost it/got stolen/died"
"..."
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Dude it sounds like a fine machine if you want to move away from gaming, which I'm sure you will find easy in college. So be thankful for what you have and study/party hard at college!
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Yeah, you should have thought about everything before you decided to say yes so easily... you could have even said you needed to run Windows, and the iBook can't do that...
You didn't have to bring up games at all.
-I don't know why I'm writing this in past-tense... this is still a fixable situation
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I'd say definitely no to the used mac. Not because it's a mac, but unless you or your family is in dire financial troubles (and I'm assuming that's not the case considering you were going to buy a new mac) you're better off just buying a new computer.
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As the first poster said, it depends on what you want. 2005 laptops are still very functional but obviously not optimal gaming, making videos, etc etc. If you just want to have a computer to browse the web and have documents on then the free laptop is totally fine until you're out of college. If you want to preform stuff that would challenge your computer then get a better one.
Btw, if you want a gaming computer why the hell are you even looking at macs anyway?
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definitely its viable, if its 3/4 gig ram it can't run sc2 and that won't distract you
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On August 11 2010 09:56 micronesia wrote:
Just be honest and say something like "I don't think that can run some of the software I'm planning on using"?
This. Make an excuse and say you have to run Photoshop or some other non-game software that's hardware intensive.
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the laptop is fine if all you do is word process and check your email. If you are majoring in something that needs a computer, you best get a new one. If you mom doesn't want you playing sc, get a high end laptop with a crap video card.
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Osaka27143 Posts
Do you have a video camera? Your 2005 laptop can't grind through making videos. What about class projects that require video?
Do you take pictures? Running Aperture would be tough on that. Is there a built in camera for skype so you can talk to your parents via computer?
Is there still a warrenty? (no). If it breaks down then can you buy a new computer later?
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The kicker with that iBook is that all iBooks use PowerPC CPUs which many programs will not support. It's not just about the power of the computer, but whether or not a program even from Apple will support the old (and obsolete now) architecture + instruction set that your CPU is built on.
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Osaka27143 Posts
Do you really want to trust the contents of your post secondary education to a 6 year old hard drive? Nothing is lamer than going to your proessor in the second semester and saying "my computer died and I lost my paper". Sounds like bullshit, and you don't want to be having hardware issues when you are studying.
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Honestly if you want to game in college it is NOT a problem. I am on a varsity team, had some time for friends, a relationship, and kept a respectable GPA while playing a wide variety of games such as SC, TF2, C&C, age of empires, PS3 like arkham/assassins creed, etc etc. Anyways that doesn't have anything to do with your post regarding the dilemma but I thought I would mention that I think it's silly to go to college with the outlook of "man I have to give up video games because I'll have no life and get terrible grades". A bunch of people play them, especially guitar hero and CoD. I realize that might just be your mom's naive outlook but don't give up something you love and enjoy if you don't have to and theres no reason to.
As for your dilemma, I guess you have to decide what you want to do. I think you should play SC2 if you want to (I sure will be LOL) and if you decided that then you'll need something a little more up to date. I understand that it feels like a waste because you have something adequate already but maybe what you could do is build a semi-decent but economical desktop for gaming and use the macbook for school, papers, emailing, etc and carry it with you during the day. Anyways, just my 2 cents.
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Osaka27143 Posts
I know you have already accepted the laptop, but you could call her up and say that you have discovered that it doesn't meet the requirements for your course work.
"Would you like me to return it? Or if you don't want it, would you like me to donate it somewhere?"
Arg, I hate it when clueless people foist things on others. AS IF YOU WANT A SIX YEAR OLD LAPTOP WHEN YOU GO TO COLLEGE.
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On August 11 2010 10:38 Manifesto7 wrote:
I know you have already accepted the laptop, but you could call her up and say that you have discovered that it doesn't meet the requirements for your course work.
"Would you like me to return it? Or if you don't want it, would you like me to donate it somewhere?"
Arg, I hate it when clueless people foist things on others. AS IF YOU WANT A SIX YEAR OLD LAPTOP WHEN YOU GO TO COLLEGE.
If you choose to do that I can give you many reasons to make it sound real legitimate
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i would take a six year old laptop ASAP for the right price. and free is pretty right.
though of course if someone were going to buy me a new one instead, then no.
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EPT
