Long time readers of this blog know that I a proponent of sustainable computing: thinking about how your hardware, software and data lasts.
Yesterday I took one more step towards extending the life of my pre-retina unibody mid-2012 MacBook Pro.
I maxed out the RAM, doubling it from 8GB to 16GB. Unfortunately the machine does not support any more than that. With 8GB RAM, the machine would often use about 2GB on my SSD as ‘swap’, or overflow space. With 16GB swap is zero, because there is always more free RAM.
The results have been immediate. Applications open quicker on the first launch, especially when there are already several other applications open. Web pages seem to load more quickly too.
As I’ve described previously, I have also upgraded the storage on the machine: changing the spinning hard drive that it shipped with a 1TB SSD. And couple of years ago, I also changed the (then) eight year old battery for a new one. Finally, in other minor changes I’ve replaced some missing screws for the bottom case and replaced the broken/missing feet.
In total this has cost me about INR 15,000 on the outside. The laptop itself is a (free) hand-me-down. That is less than one tenth the office of a new M1 MacBook Pro with similar RAM and storage. Of course the new machine would have been faster and would have had a lot more battery life. But it’d also have been less upgradeable and maintainable. And it’d have fewer ports – and types of ports – than this one.
There’s a joy in owning a new, snappy machine, undoubtedly. But there’s a different joy in being able to service your own laptop & update its components. In making deliberate choices about using well crafted, efficient software because you don’t have the luxury of raw processing power.
I’m going to conclude by pasting what I wrote in a previous post:
And using well-constructed hand-me-downs has also forced me to become at least somewhat proficient at repair and maintenance, meaning I get to know these things better, which in turn teaches me what about them makes them great in the first place.
Finally, adopting a mindset of being okay using such tools has over time helped me get better at identifying new items that are likely to last long, perpetuating the cycle.
(ends)