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OT: What's the Oldest Laptop Usable?
Teenage son wants his own Macbook to make beats. I can hardly say no, but I'm not springing for a new one. But what's the oldest laptop I can get that will run with semi-up-to-date OS? The 2009 white Macs are easy to come by, but I doubt they have much longevity.
Comments
Yeah, my 2008 macbook will not update past 10.8 or so.
What about an older Windows laptop with FL Studio?
I’d look for a 2012 MacBook Air with 8GB RAM. SSD and battery are replaceable if required, but SSDs are pricey. You should be able to find a 13” with with 256GB SSD for under US$500.
I've got a PowerBook Duo230 in the attic. It might be getting a bit too old, soon.
2011 and newer support high sierra. Go 2011 or later. 2012 macbook pro quadcore i7 15 inch is a good one. Need plenty of power to run music projects
Thanks to all. I guess the other question is whether to get a Windows laptop and run FruityLoops. But I have ZERO expertise outside of Apple gear....
MacBook Pro mid-2012 (the non-retina versión) The last MacBook where you can replace the hard drive or the RAM by yourself. And it will be receiving updates for a while after the 2011 models. It was still sold on apple’s website in 2016. Overall pretty good. Probably the last Mac I will ever buy until I can go ipad only.
No idea about windows PCs, I have 3 of them, all pretty much crap for audio.
There it is. I'd look for one that has firewire, lots of good audio interfaces that use it.
Not sure if those laptops came with solid state drives, but if they didn't, and you wanted to upgrade the performance, that's a great way to get an old computer running significantly faster. My ancient 2006 macbook runs fine, with an SSD. Sadly OSX Lion is the highest OS it will run.
As an audio person, it'd be cool to have one with a CD burner. It's weird how often it comes in handy- lots of cars don't have aux jacks and just take cd's, watching dvd's on TV's in hotel rooms, people you're working with wanting to take music or sessions home with them, archiving completed projects onto DVD's to clear up space on the hard drive.
Not that there's anything wrong with FL Studio, but you seriously have a lot of options for music software on PC beyond just FL Studio.
2012 MacBook Pro. Hands down still the best "old mac" deal. And fairly powerful by even today's standards
external USB2 dvd burners are like $15
i ripped the dvd out of my macbook pro and installed a caddy for an SSD. bought a cheap external DVD burner and maybe used it 2-3 times to burn some cd's for the car.
A lot more usable free stuff on Windows too the last time I was into the non-iOS side of music making. Handy if you're on a budget.
I've had FL Studio forever (lifetime free updates) and can recommend if the workflow suits. It's come a long way from FruityLoops.
My view is about 2 years out of date though, haven't been using the desk/laptop for music making.
an I5 laptop is relatively cheap and more than capable,of 'making beats". PC daws are highly scalable, from heavy weights (protools,nuendo...) to lightweight but INCREDIBLY capable ones like FL, Reaper and..... Renoise!!!
Be warned though that PCs may require to be properly configured, and some chipsets can be problematic.
My 2010 macbook pro runs fine on El Capitan and will run the latest OS. Enough for making beats. Just get Reaper and a bunch of free plugins. I put in an SSD a few years back. That helped.
I've got the mid-2012 non-retina MBP. Haven't updated the SSD yet, but even without it can still (just about) run Logic with no latency. Went for this as i could upgrade the RAM cheaply, and it has audio in and out as well as FireWire.
I do get occasional 'drive writing speed' warnings when using Logic, and it takes an age to boot things up, but this is only since recent OSX updates and will be fixed with the SSD upgrade.
Isn't that exactly what teenage sons are for?
Which is the 1st one with Bluetooth LE for continuity and BT midi?
Check out LMMS. Your son wants to make beats. This fits the bill and is free. Get a cheap $50 Windows box and put this on and let him play with it. This should work great for such a purpose and is very, very inexpensive, yet powerful enough that it should satisfy him for quite a while.
I have a 12'' 2013 Macbook (non-Pro) which is completely flawless with a decent audio interface.
I do big gigs with it, never had a hiccup.
So I guess you could go way back for your purpose.
EDIT: It is a Pro. It's just a tiny Pro.
Here, check some of these out:
https://www.ebay.com/b/PC-Laptops-Netbooks/177?Operating%20System=Windows%207|Windows%208|Windows%208%2E1|Windows%2010|Not%20Included&_udlo=0&_udhi=50&LH_BIN=1&LH_ItemCondition=2000|1000|2500&_fspt=1&LH_PrefLoc=1&Processor%20Type=Intel%20Core%202%20Duo&rt=nc&Hard%20Drive%20Capacity=Less%20than%20100GB
Here's the URL to LMMS:
https://lmms.io/
Do not get macbook air, those are really underpowered machines made for people who dont want to use it for anything else than browsing safari.
Macbook pro is the way to go on osx side. But keep in mind that if you want to go cheaper, its better to buy a windows laptop than some way too crappy and old mac
Nonsense. I have one at home that runs Ableton & Melodyne just fine.
Specs prove that its not nonsense. And even tho its made for surfing with safari and stuff like that, it doesent mean that it would be unable to run ableton. But lets put it this way, my 2014 mbp sometimes ran out of horsepower on me, using ableton. 2012 mbp would run out of horsepower sooner, and 2012 air A LOT sooner..
I have a Macbook Air that runs music software perfectly, for the size and battery time they are unmatched.
Okay. But extrapolation of your logic would mean then that the only option is a maximum spec 2017 MacBook @ US$4199, as every other option will run out of horsepower sooner.
Or we could just say that the MacBook Air is the cheapest option that is fit for purpose as it is capable of running a couple of dozen stereo tracks with a bunch of plugins and a stack of effects, and meets the criteria “oldest laptop ... capable of running an up to date OS”.
That wasnt my logic.
Mbp from the same year has a lot better bang for the buck. Air is overpriced for what it does, so much so that i would rather go with windows(and i have learned to dislike windows a lot)