4 ms·

I have no idea how the two points in the article are the only takeaway the author had. On point one, Apple has never been the cheapest at anything. Although the

I have no idea how the two points in the article are the only takeaway the author had. On point one, Apple has never been the cheapest at anything. Although they have been offering more low end options as of late they are still not a 'budget' manufacturer and likely never will be. On point two, it is absolutly possible that a 5 year old machine still runs fine. Depending on the machine! A 5 year old macbook pro is still pretty capable. A 5 year old acer laptop that you got at a black friday sale... not so much. I think this is the level of user they would like to have switch and it's not that far fetched.

Chilinot 11y ago
> "On point two, it is absolutly possible that a 5 year old machine still runs fine. [...] A 5 year old acer laptop that you got at a black friday sale... not so much. [...]" If you take good care of your computers they can last a very long time, even cheap ones. Still, the person that bought that acer laptop on a black friday might be one of the people that fall into door one.
bluedino 11y ago
My mother has been using exactly that - a 4 year old black Friday Acer laptop. 2 years in, she complained that it was painfully slow so I stuck an SSD and an extra 2GB of RAM in it. This past year the trackpad quit working, so we connected an old USB mouse. Finally for Christmas I bought an iPad Mini for $199. It's so much smaller than the 15.6" laptop she had, so much easier to use, turns on/off instantly, the battery lasts all day. It's a huge improvement for her. Facebook, games, email, Facetiming her grandkids... She keeps the Acer around for one thing - ripping CD's to sync to her SanDisk MP3 player.
- tdkl 11y ago
  Good luck using that Mini for 4 years, when iOS runs worse and worse on it. You could mend that with more RAM, but hey that kind of luxury ain't "the Apple way".
  - ghaff 11y ago
    My dad still uses my old first gen iPad and it does everything he needs it to do. It's been the greatest gift (for me) ever. He was never comfortable using PCs and I do FAR less tech support than I used to.
  - bennyg 11y ago
    Can you replace the RAM in a Surface or a GalaxyTab?
- type0 11y ago
  Why didn't you upgrade her to desktop pc? Laptops, especially old ones with bad heat dissipation suffer immensely in performance. With middle of the road desktop + ssd she would not need to upgrade in many years, better ergonomics too. The way I see it, even non techie user can gain a lot in productivity just by learning a couple of keyboard shortcuts and using simple automatization tools that are more readily available on the desktop. The problem with ipads is that one would rely on apps that could quit working any time and you loose your data somewhere in the cloud.
  - bluedino 11y ago
    >> Why didn't you upgrade her to desktop pc? She doesn't want a desktop. She replaced the Pentium 4 Dell desktop I gave her 10 years ago with the Acer laptop. You can't use a desktop on the couch, etc.

Chilinot 11y ago

> "On point two, it is absolutly possible that a 5 year old machine still runs fine. [...] A 5 year old acer laptop that you got at a black friday sale... not so much. [...]" If you take good care of your computers they can last a very long time, even cheap ones. Still, the person that bought that acer laptop on a black friday might be one of the people that fall into door one.

bluedino 11y ago

My mother has been using exactly that - a 4 year old black Friday Acer laptop. 2 years in, she complained that it was painfully slow so I stuck an SSD and an extra 2GB of RAM in it. This past year the trackpad quit working, so we connected an old USB mouse. Finally for Christmas I bought an iPad Mini for $199. It's so much smaller than the 15.6" laptop she had, so much easier to use, turns on/off instantly, the battery lasts all day. It's a huge improvement for her. Facebook, games, email, Facetiming her grandkids... She keeps the Acer around for one thing - ripping CD's to sync to her SanDisk MP3 player.

tdkl 11y ago
Good luck using that Mini for 4 years, when iOS runs worse and worse on it. You could mend that with more RAM, but hey that kind of luxury ain't "the Apple way".
- ghaff 11y ago
  My dad still uses my old first gen iPad and it does everything he needs it to do. It's been the greatest gift (for me) ever. He was never comfortable using PCs and I do FAR less tech support than I used to.
- bennyg 11y ago
  Can you replace the RAM in a Surface or a GalaxyTab?
type0 11y ago
Why didn't you upgrade her to desktop pc? Laptops, especially old ones with bad heat dissipation suffer immensely in performance. With middle of the road desktop + ssd she would not need to upgrade in many years, better ergonomics too. The way I see it, even non techie user can gain a lot in productivity just by learning a couple of keyboard shortcuts and using simple automatization tools that are more readily available on the desktop. The problem with ipads is that one would rely on apps that could quit working any time and you loose your data somewhere in the cloud.
- bluedino 11y ago
  >> Why didn't you upgrade her to desktop pc? She doesn't want a desktop. She replaced the Pentium 4 Dell desktop I gave her 10 years ago with the Acer laptop. You can't use a desktop on the couch, etc.