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The best Mac laptop ever

We all love our Macs, but one Mac laptop was the best ever.

What was it?  It was the late-2009 through mid-2010 white plastic MacBook.

What?  That piece of ugly white?

Yes!  Here's why:
  • They are powerful.  It was nearly as powerful as the MacBook Pro of its day, and can still run a modern OS well.  It was faster than many more modern MacBooks.
  • It was inexpensive.  It was under $1000 when new, and today they are under $400.
  • It is tough.  People could only ruin them with water or with serious abuse.
  • Unlike today's Macs, it is standards-based.  It uses standard memory, drives, and dvd.
  • The memory is replaceable.  The memory can be inexpensively expanded to 16 GB (the same limit as today's most expensive MacBook Pro).
  • The hard drive is replaceable.  A MacBook today can easily use an off-the-shelf 2 TB SSD drive.  Try a 2 TB drive in today's MacBook Pro.  Haha, see you at the bank.
  • The battery is long-lived.  I have many heavily used 7+ year old MacBooks, all still running their original battery.
  • It's still useful.  It can still use the latest Mac OS.
There are a few downsides:
  • The white plastic case can show micro-abrasion scratches.
  • The machine doesn't have USB3, as seen on modern laptops.  Then again, the iPhone and iPad don't support USB3 either (?!)
  • With the built-in DVD drive, it is quite bulky compared to modern laptops
  • On misused machines
    • cosmetic white stress cracks can emerge on the back plastic of the display clam shell
    • liquids spilled into the keyboard can ruin the keyboard, preventing typing, or in some cases, starting.

So there you have it!  The 2010 MacBook.  The best Mac laptop ever.

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