For quite a few years now laptops have been secondary computers for me. Anything that needs real horsepower is done on my iMac; the laptop is used for writing, email access, and general internet browsing. I keep my laptops for a long time--I'm writing this on a late 2008 13" MacBook Al (memory upgraded to 6 GB and the HD replaced with 128GB SSD), 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo.
More than anything I want portability, so I'm considering one of the 2017 MacBooks. For added usable life, I want to do some upgrading, and I'm trying to figure out what'll be useful. I know the wisdom is to go higher on purchase because you can't add to many options later. (the reason I was going to go with the 12" MacBook was purely portability, now that they've upgraded the keyboard.)
The choices:
Storage. I'm leaning to the 256gb option, simply because I don't really store much on my laptop. Almost all of my audio and video are on my desktop; I have almost 47 gb free of the ~120gb SSD of the current MacBook.
Memory: 8 or 16 GB. I'm inclined to get 16 GB, even though 6 GB works now. I did upgrade the existing one so needing more RAM in a number of years is a reasonable assumption even if I'm not doing heavy work.
Processor. 1.2, 1.3, or 1.4 GHz, i5 in the lower ones, i7 for the 1.4. Similar issue as the memory: I'm not doing anything intensive, but by gosh my current MacBook feels slow. I might regret not getting an initial boost.
I was reading this article,
https://www.imore.com/cpu-vs-ram-vs-ssd-which-mac-upgrades-make-most-sense
but it doesn't quite address the options with the newest MacBook, or the issue of it being a secondary computer that's kept around for a long time.
I was going to kick each of the three options to the top, to future-proof--but I wondered if that was overkill for my needs.
Any thoughts?
More than anything I want portability, so I'm considering one of the 2017 MacBooks. For added usable life, I want to do some upgrading, and I'm trying to figure out what'll be useful. I know the wisdom is to go higher on purchase because you can't add to many options later. (the reason I was going to go with the 12" MacBook was purely portability, now that they've upgraded the keyboard.)
The choices:
Storage. I'm leaning to the 256gb option, simply because I don't really store much on my laptop. Almost all of my audio and video are on my desktop; I have almost 47 gb free of the ~120gb SSD of the current MacBook.
Memory: 8 or 16 GB. I'm inclined to get 16 GB, even though 6 GB works now. I did upgrade the existing one so needing more RAM in a number of years is a reasonable assumption even if I'm not doing heavy work.
Processor. 1.2, 1.3, or 1.4 GHz, i5 in the lower ones, i7 for the 1.4. Similar issue as the memory: I'm not doing anything intensive, but by gosh my current MacBook feels slow. I might regret not getting an initial boost.
I was reading this article,
https://www.imore.com/cpu-vs-ram-vs-ssd-which-mac-upgrades-make-most-sense
but it doesn't quite address the options with the newest MacBook, or the issue of it being a secondary computer that's kept around for a long time.
I was going to kick each of the three options to the top, to future-proof--but I wondered if that was overkill for my needs.
Any thoughts?
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