I have a late 2011 MacBook Pro that is running High Sierra but is very sluggish - is it actually worth spending money upgrading the 4GB memory & also the storage to SSD to help it run faster or am I just throwing money away?
Any opinions would be welcomed.
MacBook Pro
I would say not, it is a 10 year old mac and the OS cannot be upgraded any further and
no longer receives Security Updates from Apple.
In time you will probably find that any browsers you use will no longer get security updates and
will no longer be able to connect to websites you like to visit.
The SSD would make the biggest difference in speed, the RAM less so.
That money would be better spent on another mac or other computer.
Or perhaps my birthday present.
I would say not, it is a 10 year old mac and the OS cannot be upgraded any further and
no longer receives Security Updates from Apple.
In time you will probably find that any browsers you use will no longer get security updates and
will no longer be able to connect to websites you like to visit.
The SSD would make the biggest difference in speed, the RAM less so.
That money would be better spent on another mac or other computer.
Or perhaps my birthday present.
An SSD isn't expensive and once the laptop becomes too old you still can remove the SSD and use it with another computer externally by installing the SSD into an external USB3 enclosure. I suggest using a Crucial MX500 series SSD as it is a good compromise on price & performance, but stay away from the Crucial BX500 series as it can be as slow as a hard drive as are many other budget SSDs.
Another option to continue using the laptop once macOS becomes too old is by installing Linux on this laptop. Linux runs great with just 4GB of RAM and give you a current & supported non-Apple OS with the popular web browsers such as Firefox, Google Chrome, and Vivaldi. Linux Mint, or one of the Ubuntu flavors such as Kubuntu or Ubuntu MATE are good choices as they are easy to install and should just work on a Mac plus these particular versions work well with 4GB of RAM. The standard Ubuntu doesn't work as well with limited memory and older systems. These Linux installers also include a "Live" mode where you can test out Linux without installing it to see what it is like, but keep in mind it will run extremely slow when booted from a USB stick. This option does require you to learn a new OS, but it is a great way to keep using older computers.
I highly recommend creating a bootable macOS USB installer first so if you install Linux and don't like it that you have an easy way to reinstall macOS since many people encounter issues using Internet Recovery Mode to reinstall macOS.
OK thanks for the comments although that is really frustrating ☹️
That’s really helpful thank you. I was looking at OWC SSDs but the MX500 looks better value thanks.
The Linux option sounds a bit techy for me but I’ll work it out if I need it I’m sure!
All the best
MacBook Pro late 2011 - is it worth upgrading RAM & SSD
