u/jfefleming

Hi y"all

I'm considering replacing my 2014 MacBook air. Its still working, mostly fine but im not sure how much longer that will hold true and I know Ramageddon will push up prices... The air has 128GB storage and an i5 processpr with 5GB ram, so most things will be an upgrade!

What i like about the Air is the longevity/build quality, portability, and that it has old USB (for all my peripherals) and an SD card reader for my camera. Ohh and its intel based, so runs linux happily (unlike the new soicone chip macs). I'm willing to pay more to achieve longevity, but open to a wide price range.

LAPTOP QUESTIONNAIRE

Country

UK (don'tmind shipping from overseas).

Budget

£2000 (upper limit. Ideally sub £600)

Are you open to refurbs/used options?

Yes. Indeed i might prefer it.

Screen size

13" (12 or 14 ok but 13 is the sweet spot)

Weight limit

~1KG ideally

Purpose

General purpose

Form factor

Standard/Clamshell

Intended usage

Web browsing (firefox), emails, rss, office applications (libre office), photo management (gimp, darktable, digikam etc), basic audio and video management (ripping, playback, some streaming bust mostly I use my TV for that), lightweight programming amd data analysis (R/RStudio, Python), vintage gaming (platformers, text based - i mostly game on switch)

Desired battery life

4hrs+

Please list, in order of most important to least important, the priority between Size, Weight, Performance, Battery life

Weight, size, battery life, performance (lets be honest, most things will be an improvement)

Info/Requirements

Plays nice with linux (currently mint, but I'll probably try something new). 2+ old style USB ports and at least one USB C (I know I need to move eventually, but currentlyall my peripherals, external drives etc, use the old USB standard). An SD card slot would be brilliant, and ideally an HDMI port (though that could be the firat thing to move to USB C as thats a fairly straightforward cable swap - if i do use USB-C for the monitor, i guess I'd want at least 2 USB-C ports, with one offering charging).

Hi team

I have lots of digital media on my computer (I dont rely on streaming services for things i really care about).

If i put things onto an external harddrive, how do i need to format the drive so that the frame reads it? And what file formats does it support?

I'm currently running Linux Mint XFCE on a 2014 13inch MacBook Air - Intel dual core 1.4GHz i5-4260U, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD.

It's mostly fine. The battery claims to be at about 70% of original capacity, in practice it seems to give a few hours - maybe 4 if I'm cautious, don't stream video etc.

Sometimes the fan gets... excited, but otherwise its pretty good.

It's main weakness is that the number row no longer works reliably. I've looked into replacing this, and its a more complex job than I'd be confident doing myself, and I've been quoted around £150. Which feels like it is stretching the value of the tech...

So, I'm considering upgrading.

Currently, I'm looking at getting a more recent, but still used, Macbook Air from the intel chip era. I'm leaning towards a 2017 MacBook Air, with the best spec I can (8GB RAM, 2.2 GHz i7-565U processor, 256GB SSD, ideally a new battery). This would likely be somewhere between £180 and £300, depending on how close to the maxed out spec I could get.

Sticking to a 2017, rather than, say, 2020 model (2018-19 to be avoided because of the butterfly keyboard), would mean I don't need a new charger or cables for peripherals (though at some point I'll probably need to accept fate and move to USB C peripherals. More importantly, as someone who takes a lot of photos, the 2017 is the last version which had an SD card reader, which is a big pro is a big plus.

The alternatives would be a MacBook Pro (which loses the portability of the air) or a newer non-Mac alternative, which might still have an SD card reader and USB C connections - I'll be running Linux regardless.

So my question is, am I being foolish looking to upgrade to something which is itself nearly 10 years old? Is it stupid to stick to relatively out-dated processors etc? Or would a 2017 Air be noticeably better than what I have, competitive with newer low-end windows machines, and be likely to last well thanks to Mac build quality?

I appreciate any sage words of wisdom.

I'm currently running Linux Mint XFCE on a 2014 13inch MacBook Air - Intel dual core 1.4GHz i5-4260U, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD.

It's mostly fine. The battery claims to be at about 70% of original capacity, in practice it seems to give a few hours - maybe 4 if I'm cautious, don't stream video etc.

Sometimes the fan gets... excited, but otherwise its pretty good.

It's main weakness is that the number row no longer works reliably. I've looked into replacing this, and its a more complex job than I'd be confident doing myself, and I've been quoted around £150. Which feels like it is stretching the value of the tech...

So, I'm considering upgrading.

Currently, I'm looking at getting a more recent, but still used, Macbook Air from the intel chip era. I'm leaning towards a 2017 MacBook Air, with the best spec I can (8GB RAM, 2.2 GHz i7-565U processor, 256GB SSD, ideally a new battery). This would likely be somewhere between £180 and £300, depending on how close to the maxed out spec I could get.

Sticking to a 2017, rather than, say, 2020 model (2018-19 to be avoided because of the butterfly keyboard), would mean I don't need a new charger or cables for peripherals (though at some point I'll probably need to accept fate and move to USB C peripherals. More importantly, as someone who takes a lot of photos, the 2017 is the last version which had an SD card reader, which is a big pro is a big plus.

The alternatives would be a MacBook Pro (which loses the portability of the air) or a newer non-Mac alternative, which might still have an SD card reader and USB C connections - I'll be running Linux regardless.

So my question is, am I being foolish looking to upgrade to something which is itself nearly 10 years old? Is it stupid to stick to relatively out-dated processors etc? Or would a 2017 Air be noticeably better than what I have, competitive with newer low-end windows machines, and be likely to last well thanks to Mac build quality?

I appreciate any sage words of wisdom.

I'm currently running Mint XFCE on a 2014 13inch MacBook Air - Intel dual core 1.4GHz i5-4260U, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD.

It's mostly fine. The battery claims to be at about 70% of original capacity, in practice it seems to give a few hours - maybe 4 if I'm cautious, don't stream video etc.

Sometimes the fan gets... excited, but otherwise its pretty good.

It's main weakness is that the number row no longer works reliably. I've looked into replacing this, and its a more complex job than I'd be confident doing myself, and I've been quoted around £150. Which feels like it is stretching the value of the tech...

So, I'm considering upgrading.

Currently, I'm looking at getting a more recent, but still used, Macbook Air from the intel chip era. I'm leaning towards a 2017 MacBook Air, with the best spec I can (8GB RAM, 2.2 GHz i7-565U processor, 256GB SSD, ideally a new battery). This would likely be somewhere between £180 and £300, depending on how close to the maxed out spec I could get.

Sticking to a 2017, rather than, say, 2020 model (2018-19 to be avoided because of the butterfly keyboard), would mean I don't need a new charger or cables for peripherals (though at some point I'll probably need to accept fate and move to USB C peripherals. More importantly, as someone who takes a lot of photos, the 2017 is the last version which had an SD card reader, which is a big pro is a big plus.

The alternatives would be a MacBook Pro (which loses the portability of the air) or a newer non-Mac alternative, which might still have an SD card reader and USB C connections - I'll be running Linux regardless.

So my question is, am I being foolish looking to upgrade to something which is itself nearly 10 years old? Is it stupid to stick to relatively out-dated processors etc? Or would a 2017 Air be noticeably better than what I have, competitive with newer low-end windows machines, and be likely to last well thanks to Mac build quality?

I appreciate any sage words of wisdom.

At present, for things that matter, I use 2FA - a password manager that prompts for the password itself (not just face, thumb print etc), and a 2FA code from an app unlocked via biometrics.

​

If passkeys just need my unlocked device, how are they more secure than 2FA?

Just replaced my old Rhino Gear ceramic grinder with a Kingringer K2 and OHH MY GOD its so easy to use!!!

I think I know the responses I will get to this, but want to sense check my thinking.

I'm running a 2014 MacBook Air on Catalina. I'm still entirely happy with it and see no reason to upgrade. With one exception.

The 1-9 keys no longer reliably function. Sometimes they work for a bit, sometimes a hard press will register, but by and large nothing.

I've tried:

• Resetting SMC (no change)
• Resetting NVRAM (no change)
• Restarting in safe mode (no change)
• Running a diagnostic (returns no issues)
• A soft reinstall of Catalina.

I've also checked mouse keys - not activated.

External/on-screen keyboard both work as input methods, but on-screen doesnt register anything when i press the 1-9 keys.

All of this leads me to suspect it is hardware issue. A basic clean with compressed air has made no difference. I therefore suspect I need a top case replacement. However apple have said they wont do this for the machine, as it is too old.

I'm looking for an external quote. We'll see what's that comes back as, and if its worth doing.

Is it worth me trying rolling the OS back to Mojave just in case it's not a hardware issue?

Is there anything else I should consider?

Am I likely right in the diagnosis?

Thanks

All else being equal, competition should mean lower prices right?

So why doesn't this at least counteract inflation? Is everything just a cartel?

Hi there,

For the last week or so, I've had a message popping up on my elipsa 2e saying a software update is available.

I tell it to download, only to get a message saying "unable to complete update - Please remove some books or dictionaries to make space for this update to complete".

I thought this might be due to lots of pdfs with embedded images (i use it for reading reports at work), so cleared off some out of date bits, and removed a couple of dictionaries I'm not using.

Then I checked my storage. I have 27.6GB of 32 GB available.

What's going on with this update? Does anyone have similar issues? Do I need to factory reset? :s