Burnincoco said:

I can tolerate Windows, but I can’t live with it.

I moved from Win 3.0 to Mac OS9 and never looked back.
Do what feels right and you can live with.

Macky-Mac said:

regarding your estimate of the costs, you should also consider prices for software that you'll have to get for windows.

FreakinEurekan said:

I also don’t use Windows unless ABSOLUTELY necessary. My wife, for example, must use Windows for her job so we got her a Windows laptop. But… €300 isn’t much for a recent Mac, of course.

The risk with upgrading, is either causing some damage in the process -or- just the random luck of some 10-year-old component dying. Spending €206 will buy you some substantial upgrades in usability, but with damage or a failure you could end up with no Mac at all. Do you have a “Plan B” if that happens? If that would be a truly devastating thing - I’d suggest going to Windows at that price.

If you’d just “Rather not” spend more than €300 - but in the event of a failure, you could - then the upgrade makes sense.

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MikeG17901 said:

1) Get new battery on ebay (very easy to change)
2) The SSD is not hard to change, but there are all sorts of issues even with compatible m.2 SSDs, such as sleep issues and boot issues.
3) Instead of the SSD change, research "Opencore Legacy Patcher" and read about it. it allows you to install any newer Mac OS, such as Mac OS Ventura. I have Ventura running on a 2014 iMac, and it nearly runs perfectly and is much faster than the native maximum OS (Catalina).

v0lume4 said:

I might can offer some food for thought as I recently purchased a new laptop after using my mid-2010 MacBook Pro as my daily for twelve years. My MBP shipped with a spinning HDD and 4GB of RAM.

Off the top, let's address the macOS sluggishness. I don't believe it's going to get any better. Why do I say that? My MacBook became a paperweight after I updated it to either 10.12 or 10.13 (I can't remember what it's running). It was fine before the update. Afterwards, it would routinely freeze to the point that I would have to hard reset the computer with the power button. Quick aside -- when you see me appearing very salty in other threads when macOS and iOS updates are discussed, now you know one of the reasons why. But I digress. As a last resort, I opened it up and upgraded it to 8GB of RAM and a SATA SSD. I also changed out the battery. Lo and behold, the computer was functional again. And it served me well. But it was still sluggish. The problem, I believe, ultimately comes down to the dated CPU, slower RAM, and whatever Apple is doing behind the scenes to intentionally or maybe-not-intentionally sabotage performance on older machines.

You mention upgrading to an NVMe SSD. Unfortunately, I believe you'll still be capped at SATA speeds. If that adapter is nothing more than a SATA to NVMe interface, you'll still going to be capped at the slowest end of the two interfaces -- SATA.

So where does that leave you? This is the part of the conversation that I will have to separate myself from, because I don't know what your needs are or what your financial situation is. I also see the machines you're looking at and, having not used those, I can't tell you how they will perform. What I can tell you is what I purchased:

After realizing that the current Mac offerings didn't suit me like the Macs of yore did, I purchased this machine. I paid $540 USD for it, open-box from Best Buy. It runs Windows which I happen to be quite fond of (Windows 11 is sorta meh compared to 10, but I digress). Only 8GB of RAM which, while not ideal, I can get by with. I swapped out the 256GB SSD for a 1TB SSD (NVMe) for like $115 (take that, Apple!). The every day office tasks I use this machine for are relatively instant. Night and day difference when compared to my old MacBook. Not to mention, I can actually watch 60FPS YouTube videos (that's correct -- my MacBook was so old that it lacked the hardware acceleration for the newer video codecs). I can also play some older/less demanding games on it, so that's a plus. I'm personally very happy with my purchase and I can't really say that I miss macOS. Then again, I've always appreciated both OS's.

All of that said, I sadly cannot tell you what to do. I don't know if the machines you linked are good machines because I haven't used them. What I can tell you to look for in a new machine is this, because these are big user experience factors that you don't consider until you're using the machine: make sure the screen is good and make sure the trackpad is good (read: uses Windows precision drivers and is a glass trackpad).

If I can answer anything else for you, please let me know. Sorry that I couldn't really give you advice. But I hope my experience offers something to ponder.

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one more said:

If you are in France, you could also check BackMarket. You can find a reasonably decent second-hand MacBook there from 2015 for about 300€.

Unregistered 4U said:

If selling it and getting a PC is actually an option, I’d say do it. Wider choice of configuration, wider selection of software, as long as there’s no need for macOS, there’s really not a need for a Mac.

KFantomas said:

The only reasons I was really staying on MacBooks was the overall package, built quality, trackpad quality, screen quality, backlit keyboard. It always felt better and more intuitive using a MacBook.
But I don't have any macOS specific application.
Sure being in the ecosystem is nice, everything works together nicely, but the only thing Apple thing I really rely on is iCloud Drive. Which is available on Windows.

KFantomas said:

Hello guys !

So, I know It's a Mac forum, so the answers might be a bit biased in favor of staying on Mac BUT PLEASE HEAR ME OUT.

I don't really know what to do, so I have a Late 2013 MacBook Pro that's working fine, except the battery that is dying and the SSD that is the base 128GB (which uses the SATA protocol instead of the NVMe one, topping at 540MB/s read and 211MB/s write)
And I've had quite some issues, obviously the battery (which is a 1411 cycles), the mac shutting down when the battery is at 80% but that's to be expected and the small SSD which (I think) is causing slowdown using it (I've kept it on Catalina because Big Sur is unbreably slow) and it's just too slow, I'm a DJ, I use Serato and I have a 150GB sound library that I need on it. (actually it's really 250GB but the tracks/styles I really play the most is 150GB)

I try to keep as much on it as possible (since I don't have a external HDD, and overall I just prefer having everything on the internal storage, because you can forget your drive when you're going on a gig, people can steal in it parties, or it can fall and break, basically all of them already happened to me), which leave me with like 4GB free on it

So, I was thinking about upgrading it.

Here's what I've seen:

For the storage, it would be 96€:

20€ for the M.2 adapter with the screwdriver

76€ for the Crucial P2 1TB NVMe SSD

And 110€ for the iFixit replacement battery with tools


Which is costing 206€ overall for the upgrade.

But, since I've already bought it for 380€ two years ago, I'm wondering if it's really worth it for a almost 10 years old that won't go past Catalina without being sluggish (and even then I don't like newer macOS but that's a matter of preferences)

And even then, I'm not sure the slowdown I experience will end after upgrading to a NVMe SSD (usually when browsing YouTube/Soundcloud and Spotify in the background in dualscreen on my TV when I have friends over)

Oh and one thing I kinda hate is that, I think the scaling option is fantastic on Retina display, I'm using the 1440x900 scaling, but I would really prefer to use the 1680x1050 one to have more screen space to work with, but it's pretty much unusable at that scale) and this is not an issue with the SSD, but just with the old Iris 5100 that can't handle it

Sure, the actual SSD is slow (see screenshot) but is that really why macOS is sluggish ? Maybe the poor entry level i5 is struggling to keep up

Because, for 300€ (the price I would've put on it+ the 100€ I would sell it for)I can get:

A ThinkPad T470s (i7 6600U/8GB RAM/256GB SSD) for 200€

A ThinkPad X280 (i5 7300U/8GB RAM/256GB SSD) for 300€

A Dell XPS 13 9350 (i5 6200U/8GB RAM/256GB SSD) for 250€


Sure I would've liked to stay on a Mac because of the overall package (built quality, Retina screen, and fantastic trackpad)

But I'm doing just fine with iCloud Drive integration on my Windows desktop for swapping files between my MacBook, desktop and iPhone.

And a decent Windows laptop (ThinkPad/XPS, not crappy ones) with more powerful hardware might just serves me as well (especially since I've kinda been swapping OS a lot on my MacBook, alterning from macOS to various Linux distros)

Considering I would sell it as is for 100€ to a friend that hasn't got that much money and really needs a computer to use at home (she only have her phone, that's it, no computer, no tablet or anything) which I think it's a correct price (mind that the price of used Mac really ain't as low here in France than they are in the US)

Sooo yeah. I'm wondering what would y'all do ? Worth spending 200€ on a +9 years old entry level MBP or better off selling it and get a more powerful Windows PC

(And no, I really can't spend more than 300€, times are tough and I would really only have 300€ to spend)

Sorry if that was a lot to read for not much but I wanted to give you all of the informations and explain my reasoning

Thanks everybody.

View attachment 2148712 View attachment 2148711 View attachment 2148710 View attachment 2148713 View attachment 2148714 Was in the same situation. I bought an M1 MacBook Air - only cost me £700. Don’t think you could get anything better than that for the money.

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Unregistered 4U said:

The build quality has increased on non-Macs. Some of them are fairly blatantly copying the MacBook “look”. Can’t say I blame them, it’s popular with a number of people.

Find a place that offers a return policy like Apple’s and give one a try. Heck, if you’ve got the patience, get a few, return them, get a feel for the ‘state of the art’ there and you may find something to like (and also, you’d be figuring out what RAM, GPU, STORAGE configurations FEEL like on Windows).