On Nov 13, 2017, nospam wrote
(in ) :

In iganews.com,
Savageduck wrote:

...and this Mid-2010 21.5 inch, 3.6 GHz Core i5, with 16 GB DDR3, running
macOS 10.12.6 still manages to get stuff done. One day I will treat myself
to a new Mac.

you keep saying that

....and I will. I finally bought the new 10.5” iPad Pro as an upgrade for my
old iPad2. It is just that this old steam driven Mac plods on, doing all I
ask of it, while I keep stumbling over other things I want to buy. Then I
have another overseas trip scheduled for February, and that has lifted
±$3000 from my bank account.



buying something cheap, only to spend money on it to make it less sucky
is not a good idea.

No need to spend more on it. Those are just possibilities if one wanted
to keep the thing.

Yup! If the inclination grabs one, then that particular MacBook is a good
candidate for an SSD, and possibly another 4 GB RAM. Who cares if it
doesn¹t have a retina display if it will do the work.

because by the time you add all that stuff, you've spent about what a
more recent mac would have cost, which has many more features.

Not quite. To start with that $149 MacBook as configured should be enough to
give him a taste. He might, or might not want to beef it up by spending
anything from $150-$350 extra. If he gets infected, he might even decide to
pony up and by something new rather than an upgrade of the old machine.

and actually, for tony's situation, a used mac mini would be the best
choice, which he could plug into his existing displays and use his
existing keyboard and mouse.

A used mini would do the job for him. However, he is just exploring as part
of a thought experiment, and not quite ready to make any real move towards
conversion to Mac.

--

Regards,
Savageduck