iMac useful life
What is the normal life to expect from my iMac purchased in 2010. I have upgraded to 10.11.6 El Capitan. Everything works fine but am thinking I should buy a new model. Thoughts??
iMac 21.5″
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Five to seven is pretty typical, and past seven less so.
Parts and repairs generally have availability for five to seven years.
Hard disks out that far tend to fail, too, and the iMac 21.5” model can be “fun” to upgrade.
Here’s the official status: Vintage and obsolete products - Apple Support
If you decide to replace with a new iMac 21.5” model, I’d avoid the entry-level hard disk drive with 8 GB configuration. That’s good for mail and FaceTime and photos, but tends to be very slow for other uses.
There’s also the question of your own time and effort and patience, as a ~decade old system with a hard disk is just massively slower than a more recent system with more memory and particularly with an SSD. The newer iMac models are certainly considerably faster, but the storage upgrades make the hard disks seem glacial.