My parents have a 10 year old or older iMac and it runs sierra which is nearly worthless these days. When I visit them next month I am gonna make a case for them to upgrade. The 24 inch with 8GB RAM AND 256GB should be sufficient for office type tasks. Does anyone have this model and what are your thoughts?
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Upgrading iMac
- Thread starter jwolf6589
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I don't have a new iMac but your general idea seems sound.
Things to consider:
Things to consider:
- What software do they use and is it compatible with an Apple Silicon iMac?
- How much disk space are they using in the old iMac?
- Depending on the old iMac's actual model type some upgrades and simple hacks could get it to good working speed. Probably not a great option for you/them, though.
They will use just MS Office apps which is compatible with apple silicon. I think the 256GB SSD should be fine but then again I could be wrong. Perhaps 500GB would be better. The old iMac has a DVD drive which tells you how old it is. They don’t use the appleTV app so perhaps if they wanted to watch movies on the new Mac they would need to stream them from the web.
I strongly suggest you get your parents an M1 machine with 16 GB RAM if you can. They do have some models in stores, but they can be hard to find. If your parents are anything like my parents (they sound like it), they'll use a machine for 10-15 years before a replacement, and don't give a hoot if the OS is out of date. An upfront investment in RAM, while probably overkill now, now will be very worthwhile in 5+ years.
I agree however first I need to convince them to buy a new iMac. They think a machine that old should still be able to do everything. They do not understand that 10 years old for a Mac is a long time.
As you may see from some of my other 'iMac' posts on this forum, I have a different take on this compared with many other users. You don't say exactly what model iMac your parents have, but as it's a 24" and 10 years (or more) old I presumed it was an early 2009 model iMac9,1, that being the last year that the 24" was produced. However, natively that model only supported up to 10.11.6 'El Capitan'.
As you say it's running OS Sierra, either someone specifically patched it to run Sierra (which I doubt) or it's a 21.5" iMac10,1 or 11,2 Can you please confirm which model it is.
Anyway if your parents need is for light use only i.e. will use "just MS Office apps", do little or no photo or video editing, also probably use it for internet browsing too, I cannot see the need for forking out money for an M1 silicon machine as some have suggested - although I agree they appear to be very powerful, popular machines.
I am still puzzled at your comment, "10 year old or older iMac and it runs sierra which is nearly worthless these days".
If you meant Sierra is nearly worthless today, I disagree, and if you refer to the iMac in general as nearly worthless I totally disagree, but guess that depends on where you live. If in the US, and if these circa 2009 iMacs are being dumped as 'worthless' that's sad, as I can assure you that with a $50 SSD added these Core2Duo iMacs are capable of performing reasonably well for a number of years more. Here in Europe a well spec'd out 2009 21.5" model running Sierra with SSD and with 8GB or more upgraded memory are still selling for up to 300€, so yes they are still considered as being quite capable machines for word processing and similar tasks and web browsing.
However if your parents think a machine that old should still be able to do everything - they are indeed mistaken, and in that case require at least an Intel i5 machine of better still an M1 silicone model to be fully up to date. But beware, any M1 Silicon Mac if found defective outside warranty will be very expensive to repair as they are not truly modular/easily repairable as the earlier iMacs.
I bought a new iMac in the summer, it was a 16 / 512 model, but I did quite a lot of research beforehand, and the base model is quite capable of running Office and most other things. The reason I got the extra ram was because I’m doing some coding on it with quite large codebases, I knew my workload would be a stretch for 8 GB.
If you’re worried about the ram, watch some of the YouTube videos of people testing the base spec machine, it really copes quite well with memory pressure.
If you’re worried about the ram, watch some of the YouTube videos of people testing the base spec machine, it really copes quite well with memory pressure.
My parents will do nothing but web browsing and running MS Office. They do little if any photo editing and will just only view photos. But no doubt ms Office will be their primary work suite.
Some have recommended 16GB RAM and I agree it would be better but they may not want to fork out the extra cost.
If they expect to use the machine for another 10 years then they really should get a 16GB model. I know the M1 does really well with low levels of RAM but 8GB is no way going to be enough in a couple of years' time. Put it this way, we're in the dying days of 8GB being considered 'standard' for entry level models. It'll probably be 16GB within about a year. 16GB will be the minimum for several years though. Maybe as many as 5. So if you get the 16GB now, it'll have the same amount of RAM as entry level models (and so the OS etc will be designed for such amounts of RAM) for at least half a decade.
I agree. In that case they may need to order a new model instead of walking into a apple store or Best Buy and buying one.
I think that’s a bit exaggerated. I reckon we will see 8 GB in entry level models for another 3-5 years, followed by a decade or more of 16 GB models. There just aren’t that many use cases which are pushing memory usage for the base spec.
Why not gift them with your iMac? It would provide you an incentive to get the 2023 model.
8.0GB (2 x 4GB) PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz SO-DIMM 204 Pin CL9 SO-DIMM Memory Upgrade Kit for Mid 2010/2011 21.5" & 27" iMac Models. Price: $24.99.
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Since you can't upgrade anything post purchase, I'd recommend going with the 16 GB/512 GB model.
I'm all about recycling too if possible. I guess it all depends if the OP wants to spend just a little money and a little effort to make his parents' 10-year old machine run relatively reasonable.
Here in the US, a 500GB SSD drive + 16GB RAM for a machine that old may set the OP about $100 I'd guess. The OLCP patcher is free to upgrade to either Catalina, Big Sur, or Monterey, where it would give this machine at least another 5 years of life.
Back to my original point, a new M1 iMac will set them back at least $1000!
That iMac worked in the past, it works now, your parents requirements did not change. So why a new computer?
Will writing their texts in a newer version of Word make them the reincarnation of Shakespeare?
Well, this is my opinion, written on a 2010 iMac running High Sierra in the actual version of Firefox. It is fluid, responsive, has all the software you mentioned to be needed by your parents (browser, mail client, word processing, graphic viewing and editing) still maintained.
Will writing their texts in a newer version of Word make them the reincarnation of Shakespeare?
Well, this is my opinion, written on a 2010 iMac running High Sierra in the actual version of Firefox. It is fluid, responsive, has all the software you mentioned to be needed by your parents (browser, mail client, word processing, graphic viewing and editing) still maintained.
