Computer Geeks Unite! And farging help me!

[Susquehanna Birder]

It might finally be time to replace my 9 year old MBP.

[Sgt PSN]

Is it unable to keep up or you just ready for an upgrade?

[Susquehanna Birder]

It's still doing okay, but it's very slowly circling the drain. It's still quite usable, but memory limitation (4 GB max) is probably the biggest issue. I could probably swap in a SSD and get a little more life out of it, but I wonder if it's just time to send it off to the farm.

[Sgt PSN]

Good to hear that it's still running fairly well.  My Mac is 5 years old now and still runs like a champ, so I'm hopeful that I'll get another 4 or 5 years out of it. Thinking about upgrading RAM from 4GB to at least 8GB.  It occasionally gets a little sluggish when I've got too many desktops open, so I want to improve on that.  I can go up to 16, but I'm pretty sure that would be total overkill.  Also thinking about picking up a Macbook, but I'd prefer to go the used route because I don't really feel like dropping $1500 on a laptop.  At least now I know that if your laptop is still doing ok, then I can consider Macbooks that are maybe a year or 2 older than my Mac and should still expect pretty solid performance for a few more years.  I'm seeing 2009-2010 models all over ebay for like $300-400.   

[QB Eagles]

Get these if compatibility with the newest version of the operating system matters to you:

MacBook (Late 2009 or newer)
MacBook Pro (Mid 2010 or newer)
MacBook Air (Late 2010 or newer)

Anything older and you're getting something that is already obsolete, and older laptops tend to have battery issues anyway.

[Sgt PSN]

Yeah, I'm not looking at anything older than 2009, but preferably 2010 or newer if the price is right.

[Munson]

Got a new HP for cheap on cyber monday. 1 TB memory, 6 GB ram, and a touch screen which I really don't need but whatever it was a good deal. My previous HP was 6.5 years old and still actually ran okay, just overheated way too easy. Probably could have just gotten the internal fan fixed but, whatevs.

Since I haven't done this in 6+ years...what happens to my iTunes library when I download iTunes on this computer? Do the songs I acquired fo' free transfer over, or just the ones I've bought?

[Sgt PSN]

I'm sure you figured this out by now, but any purchase you made through iTunes will be available to download again, but any music you acquired outside of iTunes (ripping cd's, other purchases, filesharing downloads, etc) will need to be moved to your new computer.  Probably easiest to just put all of your music on an external and move it that way.  Then you don't need to worry about downloading your iTunes music again since it's already there. 

[Sgt PSN]

Also, Google Play allows you to upload something like 50,000 songs to their cloud for free...including iTunes purchases.  It'll keep your playlists organized the same as they are in iTunes and they'll be available for online streaming through your mobile devices through the Play Music app (not sure if available for iPhone though).  Totally free.  Not a bad way to keep your music backed up, imo. 

[Sgt PSN]

Any of you ever own a chromebook or know anyone who does?  As much as I'd like a MacBook, I can't really justify spending $1500 - $2000 knowing that I'll mostly be using it to check email and surf the web from my couch.  Total overkill for what I want.  Chromebook seems perfect for what I need it to be and only costs like 200 bucks.

[General_Failure]

They're fine for what you want. You could even go with a cheapass tablet and a case with a mini keyboard.

[Sgt PSN]

I have a cheap ass tablet....8" Samsung Tab A.  Problem with tablets is they kind of suck when you just want to browse the Web.  A lot of sites detect that you're on a mobile browser and redirect you to their crappy mobile version.  Also, connecting a keyboard often results in serious lag when typing. And that's farging annoying.

[General_Failure]

Some websites will direct a Chromebook to the mobile version, but as far as I know no major site does.

[Tomahawk]

You can get a refurbished dell laptop for $200

https://www.dellrefurbished.com/laptops

[Sgt PSN]

You can get a refurbished dell laptop for $200

https://www.dellrefurbished.com/laptops

No Windows.