New posts

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Randy B. Singer" data-source="post: 1922762" data-attributes="member: 190607">Any Macintosh that you get is likely to last a very long time.  Macs have always been very reliable hardware-wise.  The limiting factor as far as hardware used to be a Mac's rotating disk internal hard drive.  On average they would become unacceptably likely to fail after 4 years of use.  However, if you kept a backup, you could always just replace a failed hard drive.  Otherwise just about any Mac would and still will last for well over a decade.  Most long-time Mac users, if you ask, will tell you that they have a closet full of retired Macs, none of which failed, the users simply decided it "was time" to replace them with something new.The overall limiting factor for how long a Mac is good for is technology.  After about 7 years of life, an old Mac will be limited to an old version of the Mac OS, and the applications that can run on that older version of the Mac OS.  As the technology in newer Macs continues to move forward you are likely to find that you can't surf the Web reliably anymore with your older Mac, some of your apps may be discontinued or very much updated so that the file formats that you are using become antiquated and abandoned, and you are being left behind technologically.So I usually recommend that home users consider upgrading to a new Mac every 7 years or so, and that business users upgrade every 5 years or so.Old Macs don't usually get retired because they are slow.  A well maintained Mac should continue to be as fast as it was when you bought it.  If you were happy with your Mac's speed when it was new, you will likely be happy with it's speed a decade later.  Speed actually hasn't been a limiting factor for the overwhelming majority of users for a couple of decades now.  Only extreme power users really need faster and faster Macs these days.Only you can decide if you would prefer a tablet computer to a laptop or desktop computer.  All three are plenty powerful these days.  Just be sure that the apps that you need for your work exist for the platform that you want before you decide to purchase.Macs don't need to have their RAM "maxed out" anymore.  For the overwhelming number of users the minimum spec of RAM is plenty, and new Mac OS's haven't trended towards needing more and more RAM for over a decade.  You should, however, consider purchasing more internal hard drive space than you think that you ever might need during your Mac's lifespan, to prolong the life of your SSD.</blockquote>

Verification: What is the 1st digit in 7380679?