Up until about 3 years ago, this was a useful machine, but as it aged and the OS added more features it bogged down to the point where it was nearly unusable. Also at some point in time one of the OS updates made it so that some CD ROM data disks simply would not mount. Unfortunately it was a feature not a bug. This was a big issue for be because I buy quite a few used audiobooks that are on data not audio CDs.
FF to this summer. I got a spiffy new M2 MacBook Air. So my old MBP was both useless and worthless (less than $100 in trade). Last week I took the plunge by wiping the drive and installing Ubuntu on it. It reads data disks perfectly. I don’t plan on doing much more than that with it, but it is nice to have that ability again.
I was going to ask you about Linux as I read this post. How does an old mac run ubuntu. The linux iterations have become windows like so it should be somewhat easy to work with and there is a ton of information available for help. The old linux (fool) forum was a great source of information too…doc
Interesting… And maybe why my old Mac Pro e/w two CD/DVD read/Write drives should be kept around. I’ve a ton of DVDs, backups of photos from our trips, family evens in various disks, an today’s new Mac Mini has no CD/DVD reader at all… Nor does our MacBook Air… There is older MacBook Pro, needs a batter, but it does have the DVD drive, maybe a good excuse to replace it’s battery… Will have to look into Ubuntu, may simplify things… Thanks for the info…