I ended up getting a pretty much NIB Early 2008 17" MacBook Pro (non-unibody) that several people in the IRC Channel said was crap (due to the nVidia bad bumps issue) but it's been almost 2 years since i got it and it's still going strong. Machine was in excellent condition and when I got it in early 2010 for $600 (Most used ones were going for $800+ on eBay) and it's been nothing but good luck with it.
I usually have had bad luck with apples, except the pismo series (which I am actually sitting in Panera on their wireless with my Pismo with 6500Mah battery
) I have had nothing but good luck with my 2008 macbook pro. It's a very nice machine, and the battery was at 0 cycles when I got it (2 years after it was bought. it was taken out for two weeks then put back in the box and the company bought iMacs instead).
It's nice, has a great screen and I can squeeze just over 5 hours out of the battery if I try (I now have 80 cycles on the battery).
It's been a breath of fresh air with this, and I have had a shocking experience to have a laptop that has a reputation for failures, end up working better than a new macbook that was supposed to be decent. Pismos take the cake for durability. My old one back in 2003/2004 that kept me going when my iBook G3 900 went in, my pismo (400Mhz) was an excellent standby and I even spilled coffee into it 4x where I dried it out and it booted right up. It was the most abused laptop I ever had and it survived everything. The one thing that got it is on the 5th time I spilled coffee into it, I broke the trackpad connector (that the ribbon goes into from the trackpad) right off the motherboard, requiring a motherboard replacement. Unfortunately I didn't have the $150-$200 that was required to do that.
The new one I am on has been decked out (almost) with 400Mhz CPU, 768MB RAM, 80GB HDD, new battery (6500Mah), combo drive/DVD-ROM (depending which I swap in), PC Card USB 2.0 (or an 802.11g Airport Extreme compatible wireless card).
It is an awesome machine!
I usually have had bad luck with apples, except the pismo series (which I am actually sitting in Panera on their wireless with my Pismo with 6500Mah battery
) I have had nothing but good luck with my 2008 macbook pro. It's a very nice machine, and the battery was at 0 cycles when I got it (2 years after it was bought. it was taken out for two weeks then put back in the box and the company bought iMacs instead).It's nice, has a great screen and I can squeeze just over 5 hours out of the battery if I try (I now have 80 cycles on the battery).
It's been a breath of fresh air with this, and I have had a shocking experience to have a laptop that has a reputation for failures, end up working better than a new macbook that was supposed to be decent. Pismos take the cake for durability. My old one back in 2003/2004 that kept me going when my iBook G3 900 went in, my pismo (400Mhz) was an excellent standby and I even spilled coffee into it 4x where I dried it out and it booted right up. It was the most abused laptop I ever had and it survived everything. The one thing that got it is on the 5th time I spilled coffee into it, I broke the trackpad connector (that the ribbon goes into from the trackpad) right off the motherboard, requiring a motherboard replacement. Unfortunately I didn't have the $150-$200 that was required to do that.
The new one I am on has been decked out (almost) with 400Mhz CPU, 768MB RAM, 80GB HDD, new battery (6500Mah), combo drive/DVD-ROM (depending which I swap in), PC Card USB 2.0 (or an 802.11g Airport Extreme compatible wireless card).
It is an awesome machine!