Upgrading older MacBook necessary?

[tape]

I’ve got this older MacBook Pro (2011 era) that I planned to sell. I erased the 500GB solid state drive I had installed and let apple reinstall Mt Lion (the original OS). Then something came up that required me to access a CD and I realized this was the only device I had that had a cd/dvd player, so I decided to keep it—-just in case. I am thinking that I will use boot camp to install windows so it can also be there if and when I need to access a MS product. My ancient parallels program no longer works and I am not about to pay a yearly subscription for ‘in case I need it’. So my question is there any reason to upgrade the Mac OS in this situation?

 

[Raz0rEdge]

If the machine is just to have a CD drive around, I wouldn't upgrade the OS. But not upgrading the OS also restricts what apps you can run on it. Amazon has CD drives for $25, so if you ABSOLUTELY need to access a CD, you can just get a USB CD drive to use with whatever new machine you have.

 

[pigoo3]

My wife a couple weeks ago purchased an external CD/DVD drive for about $14 from a deals-site she found online. Along the lines of what Ashwin mentioned...if only keeping this computer for the optical drive ability...purchase an inexpensive external optical drive...and sell the computer if you wish.

- Nick

 

[Rod]

If you wish to use Boot Camp to instal Windows I would advise you to upgrade the Operating System to the most recent it can support. Although Boot Camp was introduced to MacOSX Leopard back in 2006 I'm sure it has changed (improved) a little since then. For example, older versions may not have the necessary drivers and or may not be able to run Windows 10.
I would certainly do a little research before making the decision to turn the device over to Windows.
See; Install Windows on your Mac with Boot Camp - Apple Support