STW IT Dept - Old Intel Macbook Air?

My dad was using a 15 year old iMac up to the end of last year.

The only thing that really stopped it's use was banking websites required a more up to date browser for security than it was able to run.

For basic stuff it will probably work fine as is.

I thought all MacBook Airs were all SSDs anyway as it was the way they got them so slim.

Basically any laptop is fine for spreadsheets and streaming YT video etc. unless its an ancient pile of crap.

Spreadsheets can be a pain in the ass on a small screen but I guess you are aware of that.

So it's simply a question of picking what you like for your budget, if that's a macbok air then get a macbook air.

14 yrs old though...that does sound pretty ancient for OS & security updates etc, so YMMV

so I'm prepared to do a battery swap and possibly an SSD change if necessary

Considering the same machine. Update the OS before an SSD change. 

I got rid of my 2013 Intel MacBook Air last year as it got really slow. It still worked but very slowly. On my 2013 it had flash storage which I think is not upgrade able but I could be wrong. 

The only thing that really stopped it's use was banking websites required a more up to date browser for security than it was able to run.

Nope, won't be used for banking, I've got other PCs for such tasks already. 

I thought all MacBook Airs were all SSDs anyway as it was the way they got them so slim.

They are/were, I might choose to up it from 128GB, apparently I'll need an adapter but it looks very doable. 

I'm more keen to look at the state of battery, a 14 year old battery might be fine, or it could be on the verge of a firey explosion (??!!?)... 

14 yrs old though...that does sound pretty ancient for OS & security updates etc, so YMMV

Was a major part of my original question I guess, it's the OS updates, the basic MB-Air seems to have only had minor hardware changes between about 2010 and 2015ish from what I can tell, but specific versions (by year) are quite limited on the approved OS release, Apple only underwrite 'High Sierra' for a mid 2011 MB-Air (not that they're underwriting much with an un-supported version of the OS, on a long out of warranty device), but there are tales of people using OpenCore Legacy Patcher to get more a more recent OS running on 'unapproved' hardware. 

Of course Apple are only issuing security patches for 'Ventura' (released 2022) or later, and I don't reckon the ancient i5/4GB in my MB Air will run an OS from 11 years after it's release.  My other alternative is installing Linux I suppose (Mint?). 

I'm open to a certain level of faff to but my preference is to keep things simple if I can, 'High Sierra' isn't current but might do the job for my needs. 

I've got to set it up regardless, the seller has apparently wiped the MacBook and rolled it back to 'Lion' (the original OS when released), so I'll need to do an update immediately whatever... 

Not sure if my MacBook was 2006 or 2009. It's been slow for a while but only recently refused to update to the latest OS. Email client now crashes every time. Unfortunately I did have a lot of old emails downloaded to it rather than on the web server but I'm sure I'll survive without them.

Just pondering a new one myself as with a life span like that, it's cheaper than several cheap windows machines over the same period.

Depends how much you paid for it I guess..if it was more than £50 you've been mugged, no offence.

£40, but I just watched a nicer looking 2014 one finish on eBay for £30. 

If we’re down to +/- a tenner on these things in trying to estimate VFM then I’d say the arse has fallen out of Intel Macs, which is a good thing if you want cheap computers, so long as they’re serviceable. 

but nope I’d never pay more than £50 for one whatever the vintage. Funnily enough I had a Quick Look on backmarket and they’re asking ~£100 for an 11” 4GB/128GB in “fair” condition… 

Understandably, Everyone want an M1 MBA now. 

You’ll be fine until Intel Mac support stops at the end of the year or soon after. 

even then it will function well and will happily dual boot into windows or macOS. When I had to use windows as a contractor I was happy that my i7 MBP could run windows 10 better in a VM within MacOS than the PC I was given for work use. 

I recently sold an MBP 13” i5 on eBay for a very fair price imo due to it having a few parrot bites on the periphery of the screen. Aside from getting a bit overwhelmed with multiple browser tabs and windows it still worked OK. The M2 MBA that replaced it is in a different class in terms of speed, efficiency, and performance though. 

still, a friend ran a very sophisticated NLP stack on a very old MBA that did stuff very quickly that I have seen many folks attempt to emulate and fail. 

Posted by: prettygreenparrot

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even then it will function well and will happily dual boot into windows or macOS.

You can install Windows 10 on it using Bootcamp. However, Win10 support will end in October. You will be able to pay for an extra year of support for $30, but it's less clear what will happen at the end of that extra year. You might be able to get Win11 installed on it by bypassing the hardware requirements (you can find instructions about that online), but there's no guarantee that will work and it's not supported by MS. But, to be honest, it would make more sense long-term to just buy a used Windows laptop if you want to run Win11.

Obvious thing to think about is to run either Linux or ChromeOS.

Posted by: cookeaa

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Officially this one will support up to 'High Sierra'. So is it reasonable to expect an old MB-Air to do the things I want on that native, approved OS, or should I be considering trying to force it to a more recent version with OpenCore Legacy Patcher and/or dual booting Linux to achieve the desired functionality?

I'm writing this on a mid-2012 MBP with SSD and lots of RAM and it happily does all the stuff you mention. Some specialist software won't run due to the older OS, but it has stuff like Photoshop and happily runs it. I wouldn't want to edit large video files on it, but for day-to-day stuff it works fine.

I've considered the hack to upgrade the OS, but honestly I can't be arsed. No interest in running Windows in any shape or form, YMMV. 

The missus gave me her old MBA the other month, it still worked fine, but the screen wasn't as sharp as this one, so I'm not really bothered about it for home use, I might take it along next time I travel though. 

But yeah, for computer bangernomics, I think it'll work fine as long as you're not expecting blazing fast performance and to run processor-hungry apps. 

LSS - it'll be fine for what it sounds like you want to do OP.

I recently sold a 2018 i5 13" MacBook Pro (£116 on eBay) that was reasonably doing all my SO needed it to: web browsing, email, Pages, Numbers, PDF-creation, photo management, music, synth, ... . It was just a bit sluggish with a gazillion tabs open in Safari and Chrome but otherwise was OK. We replaced it with an Apple refurbished M3 MacBook Air earlier in the year. 

Lion! That takes me way back. Enjoy the fresh start. And welcome to the deeper level of the Cult of Apple

Cheers all, I think for all my talk about what I might do with this thing, I’m going to just get it up and running on High Sierra and see if that suits me. 

Also from browsing various forums/reddit it seems the first “hardware upgrade” I’m likely to have to do is change the thermal paste as most ‘vintage’ MacBooks start slowing down due to thermal throttling in the first instance. 

It is funny reading all the comments on those threads, “Mac people” and “windows people” are fundamentally the same mixture of utterly ignorant and very incisive types, but they’ve just adopted a different tribe.

I won’t be putting windows on it, I’m surrounded by windows machines, many of which don’t meet the official win11 requirements, at some point I’ll be trying to do the workaround on one or other of them I’m sure. I might try putting Linux on this MBA, but not for a while and maybe never…