Macbook pro 2009 battery cycle count

theramsian

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Mar 11, 2017
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So I decided to go for a used Macbook pro 13 inch it hat a core 2 duo 2.5 GHz CPU with 8 GB of ram and that's just fine for me. I will be working on photoshop and some video editing on this mac too. This machine is 4/5 years old as I have been told and it has 196 cycle count. My biggest concern is, will this battery do well? Or should I consider a replacement? I won't be working on the battery too much unless I have a meeting with a client or something. Please help me. It's worth mentioning that this machine comes at a very reasonable price to me. Also the physical condition of this mac is good and it has a very good look.
 
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Rhinofart

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Jan 30, 2006
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I'm still rocking my 2010 17" MBP with the quad core i7, 16Gb RAM, and 1TB SSD (I've upgraded the SSD from the original 512GB). I currently have 330 cycles on my original battery. I keep mine on High Performance Graphics, and I still get 5+ hours of good solid work on battery. That's running a couple VMs in Virtualbox, running outlook all the time, and using it for word / excel work. I occasionally use it for WiFi Pentesting, and WiFi mapping for clients. I would say, if it's a good price, you can't go wrong, and when the time does come, replacement batteries are not that expensive, and if you have the right tools, replacing it isn't hard either. I've done that for a few clients of mine as well.
 

theramsian

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Mar 11, 2017
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The price is very reasonable for a macbook with this physical condition and performance too, the CPU isn't the best, but it will do good for me especially with 8GB of ram and a very good looking, only a few dents on the back. You're saying you got 330 cycles on your battery running your mac on high performance graphics and all with core i7, so I should expect longer battery life with power saving.
 

Rhinofart

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Jan 30, 2006
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Your mileage will vary, but I would guess you are correct in that your battery should last longer. Having an SSD drive makes a whole bunch of difference as well. No motor constantly running to drain power too.
I make a habit of every once in a while doing a full battery discharge, recharge, discharge, recharge cycle. That is twice I full drain the battery, and fully charge it. It keeps the battery in the best possible shape. So, when you do get your MBP, do that a few times. Charge it up fully, run it dead, charge it up, dead again, charge it up. Do that at least once every 2 - 3 months.
 

theramsian

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Mar 11, 2017
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Looks like you know what you're talking about, anyway thank you for the awesome advice, now that I got the MacBook pro. I have one problem, the guy I bought the Mac from was probably stupid, he wanted to format the HDD, and he ended up messing with some files in the OS. Now each time I boot the OS it comes up with an error message that keeps popping in and out that says "The last time you opened finder, it unexpectedly quit while reopening windows. do you want to try reopen the3 windows again? it keeps popping in and out and I can't skip it or even use the OS. so I am stuck here. Also the guy has a lock on the recovery apparently cuz when I hold command and R keys it gives me a password box!" Now if the guy doesn't rememebr that password can I use an alternative? What will happen If i take the HDD apart and replace it with a 100% formatted one? or even format that one completely? will i still get that lock?
 

Rhinofart

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Jan 30, 2006
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That sounds like the firmware alternative boot lock. You could try doing a power on while holding Command + Option + P + R for an SMC reset. Do you know what version of OS it's supposed to be running? Did the previous owner give you the disks that originally came with it? It should have been Snow Leopard. If you got the disks with it, insert your CD hold down Command + C to boot from disk.

 
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