My mom needs a new computer, and she does not want to spend much. She is coming from a PC and will mostly browse the web, use Pages and Keynote, and probably not much else. I'd like her to switch to Mac, and I think she will like it. She's a little afraid of the change, but she has an iPad and iPhone and likes them and her PC has been acting up and crashing for years and it kind of drives me crazy. There are tons of PCs that are under $1k so that's obviously tempting, but I showed her that the entry level 21.5" iMac is $1,099 and that price seems to be acceptable. I think a 256GB SSD is more than enough. I'm more of a power user and would never consider only 8GB of RAM, but I'm trusting that if Apple thinks that's enough for non-demanding users then maybe it is. I am a little concerned about the lack of 4k display and pretty old CPU (2.3GHz dual-core 7th-generation Intel Core i5).
So my main question is should I convince her to come up another $200 to get the next level up (4k display and 3.6GHz quad-core 8th-generation Intel Core i3) or will she basically not be able to tell the difference? I want this to last her for years, and the base model concerns me. I think coming up $400 for that and 16GB of RAM will price her out as she can easily get a capable all-in-one PC for half the price. Any thoughts are appreciated, and if you have experience with the base model, I'd love to hear your impressions.
So my main question is should I convince her to come up another $200 to get the next level up (4k display and 3.6GHz quad-core 8th-generation Intel Core i3) or will she basically not be able to tell the difference? I want this to last her for years, and the base model concerns me. I think coming up $400 for that and 16GB of RAM will price her out as she can easily get a capable all-in-one PC for half the price. Any thoughts are appreciated, and if you have experience with the base model, I'd love to hear your impressions.
