(Intro)
"That is correct. Now spell language."
In this episode of "Is it Obsolete",
I'm going to be taking a look at this 10 year old MacBook
that runs an Intel Core Duo.
Now, just to be clear, I'm not talking about a Core 2 Duo, which was far more common.
Rather, the Core Duo, which came out earlier.
The main difference is that the Core Duo is a 32-bit CPU, while the Core 2 Duo is a 64-bit.
So, for this test, I wanted to use an old MacBook.
Now if you're not an Apple fan, don't worry.
I'll be testing with Apple's OS X, Microsoft Windows, and Ubuntu Linux.
So, I bought this old MacBook on eBay for $60.
And this model is unique, because if you go all the way back through MacBook history,
this is the very first model produced in 2006.
It's safe to assume that whatever this laptop ends up being able to do,
all of the following models can also do and better,
especially since everything from 2007 uses a Core 2 chip.
Ok, so let's take a look at the specifications of this machine.
It was made in 2006, so it is basically 10 years old.
The CPU is an Intel Core Duo, running at 1.83 GHZ.
It has 2 GB of RAM, although I did upgrade that. Originally it came with 512 MB.
The hard drive is 250 GB, but I also upgraded that from a 60 GB original drive.
The video chip is a standard Intel GMA 950. Nothing fancy.
The LCD screen has a resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels.
It isn't exactly a retina display, but it's not bad.
The ethernet is 10/100/1000, so it's plenty fast.
And Wi-Fi is compatible with A/B/G, plus it has bluetooth,
so not the fastest but certainly usable.
And it has USB 2.0 with 2 ports available.
I'll start by examining what we can do with OSX.
So these are the only supported operating systems from Apple.
The latest version of OSX that will run here is 10.6 (Snow Leopard), which came out in 2009.
So, that means your choice of operating systems is several versions out of date.
So, I installed Snow Leapord and did some testing.
Most people agree that the web browser is paramount these days, so I focused on that.
To my suprise, I found that the latest versions of Google Chrome for Mac are 64-bit only.
So, I had to download Google Chrome 38, which came out in October 2014. Basically one year ago.
So, it isn't horribly out of date, but since there will be no future updates, it grows more out of date every day.
However, I was not able to produce any situation that Chrome 38 could not handle.
I found that Safari 5.1.10, which was released in September 2013,
is the latest that will run, so it's basically 2 years out of date.
As for Firefox, I was able to install version 41,
which is the most up to date version.
So, it appears that if you want to run the most up to date browser on a 32-bit Mac,
then Firefox is your only choice.
Now, several people said Microsoft Office was important.
Well, it turns out 2011 is the latest version you can use.
Now, whats noteworthy about that is that the next version of Office is 2016,
and it actually requires a machine running 10.10 (Yosemite),
so theres a huge gap between one version of Office and the next.
Many people said it should be able to run Facebook.
The funny thing is, Facebook used to be be a rather lightweight website, but in the last few years,
they've added so many scripts and so much multimedia
that does tend to bog down the really old computers, for example, like this iBook G4.
But, it seems to run perfectly fine on the Core Duo.
So to switch gears for a moment over to Windows.
Now, officially speaking, Apple says this MacBook can run anything from Windows XP to Windows 7.
I installed a little app called rEFIt, which is a much more versatile boot manager for Macs with EFI.
This made it very simple to install Windows 7.
I was able to use Apple's Bootcamp to automatically install all the drivers,
which made the device manager happy, and pretty much everything worked perfectly.
Under Windows 7, I was pretty much able to run all of the latest and greatest software,
including Chrome and Office.
Even though Windows 7 is several years old, it's still a very popular operating system.
In fact, I felt right at home with Windows 7,
because that's what most of our computers at work
are still using.
Many on Facebook said a modern computer should be able to do atleast 720p video streams.
So, I tried using VLC player and found that it could actually handle 1080p video with no problems.
As for streaming, I went onto YouTube and bumped it up to 1080p,
and at first it skipped a few frames but then it seemed to play fine.
So I would say it easily passes that test.
Several posters said it should be able to run Minecraft,
so I downloaded a copy and installed it.
Of course, keep in mind that even when these were brand new,
they were never really meant as gaming machines
because they had the really basic Intel Graphics chips.
If you were really interested in gaming,
Apple encouraged you to get the MacBook Pro,
which had a real 3D graphics chip in it.
It seemed to run smoothly, but I'll admit, I don't really know how to play the game, so I didn't do much.
But then I thought, 'I wonder if this machine will run Windows 10.'
Now, according to Microsoft's system requirements, it should work.
So, I downloaded a free trail copy from Microsoft and I gave it a shot.
It actually installed just fine,
and there were a few drivers I had to hunt down to get all the hardware working,
but overall, it seemed to run just fine.
So, I think we can safely expand this list all the way to Windows 10.
I'm sure it would run Windows 8, but I hate Windows 8 with a passion, so I don't care if it runs it or not.
Ok, so the big irony here is that on one hand,
operating as a Mac,
the machine is a little bit out of date,
but it's still usable.
But on the other hand,
as a Windows machine, it's actually perfectly up to date
and can run the latest and greatest stuff.
So, the last thing I needed to try was Linux, and I decided on Ubuntu
since it's the most popular distro from what I can tell.
I installed Ubuntu 15.10, which is the latest version available,
and it worked perfectly, and all the hardware appeared to be supported out of the box.
I didn't do a huge amount of testing, but it appeared that any software compiled for Ubuntu would work just fine,
which means the latest and greatest Linux software should work.
So, where does my obsolete meter place this computer?
I'm going to put it just a hair into the green,
I think within a year or two it will work its way into the red,
but for now it's a usable computer for most people.
Now, I'd also like to take a moment to point out something else.
Most of the MacBooks produced were of the Core 2 variety,
which means that they were not only 64 bit machines,
but they could also hold a lot more RAM.
And I'm well aware that I have a lot of Apple haters watching my channel,
and many of them always ask why I would use a Mac.
Well, I would like to point out something about these old MacBooks.
As I've already shown, they can run a wide variety of operating systems.
But I think the thing that makes them particularly great,
is because of the great number of them that were produced.
In fact, Apple made these systems here, for many years, all the way from 2006 to 2009,
and they all share pretty much the exact same parts
I mean, they have different logic boards in them,
because the processors were upgraded every year or so,
but they all have the same LCD, same keyboard, same optical drive, same bezel components,
and even the black and the white units are interchangable with all the parts,
so it's really easy to get parts for these things and keep them running.
So to be honest, even if I didn't like Apple's operating systems,
I would still buy one of these in order to run Windows on it just to have a cheap Windows computer.
And you can typically pick up one of the Core 2 models for well under $100 on eBay.
Well, thanks for watching, I know it's been a while since I've had a video come out
because I've been sick for a little while, and I had all kinds of crazy stuff going on.
But, don't worry, I have not abandoned you,
I have dozens of videos in progress that you'll be seeing soon,
so I'll see you next time!