A little spring cleaning led to an unexpected discovery. Under an old couch I ran across something I hadn’t seen in years, an old black poly carbon MacBook. Originally released in 2006 and discontinued in 2011, these plastic laptops were incredibly popular in their day, starting at $999 for the white model and $1,199 for the black model. These were also among the earliest MacBooks to switch to Intel processors from the PowerPC architecture, helping make Macs truly mainstream.
This particular MacBook was purchased by my wife sometime around 2007 at Apple’s flagship Soho store (which was the first Apple store in NYC when it opened in 2002). It served her well, despite getting a little beat up in the process, and was eventually retired sometime around 2010, after which I lost track of it.
The MacBook surfaced occasionally after that, usually getting moved from one closet or storage bin to another without being turned on. At some point five-plus years ago, I must have brought it into the office (I think we were all comparing retro tech we had lying around at home), where it ended up under a sofa.
Having run across it for the first time in years, covered with dust, I decided to see if it would even turn on. Opening the lid, the keys and touchpad showed signs of wear and heavy use, an issue with plastic products like this. There was a large crack in the polycarbonate body along the left side, leaving a piece of plastic hanging loose from the chassis.
Just a few minutes of searching around the CNET Labs turned up an old school MagSafe MacBook charger. I closed the lid, plugged the power cable into the magnetic power connection on the side of the laptop, and was pleased to see a green light on the connector after a few seconds.
Source: Cnet.com
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