High Sierra on late 2010 MacBook Air 11" vs El Capitan?

[DouglasCarroll]

Hi Everyone!

I just brought back to life a late 2010 11" MacBook Air with 4 GB of memory and a new install of El Capitan. Everything is running great, but before I give it to my wife for her to use I was considering upgrading it to High Sierra for the newer security updates, etc. My Wife will pretty much only use the computer for web access and listening to Pandora or watching streaming video, that's it. So here's my question, has anyone else who owns this exact model (MacBook Air 3,1) with the same specs used both ElCapitan and then High Sierra on that machine who can give feedback? I run High Sierra on my 13" MacBook Pro and really like it so I'm familiar with the OS, I'm just a little hesitant to mess with something that isn't broken, if you know what I mean.

Anyways, thanks in advance for any feedback on this, I really appreciate it!!

Have a nice day!!!!

 

[reukiodo]

Not the exact same, but I have an older 2GB 2009 MacBook Air which runs Mojave well enough for browsing and the like thanks to @dosdude1's tool, so a newer model on an older OS should be fine.

 

[DouglasCarroll]

So, I didn't really get any responses on this and decided to give it a try myself. I can happily report that this older MacBook Air with 4 GB runs High Sierra great! I'm not having any issues at all and do enjoy having the more up to date operating system and security support. So if anyone out there is using one of these and is hesitant to upgrade, go fo it!!

 

[BrianBaughn]

Along with the security updates I've seen several third-party software updates over the last couple of years that require High Sierra as a minimum…so now you're less likely to run into that problem.

 

[DouglasCarroll]

Good point, also FYI the newer browsers are faster (I benchmarked them) so everything is a definite win!

 

[Queen6]

Along with the security updates I've seen several third-party software updates over the last couple of years that require High Sierra as a minimum…so now you're less likely to run into that problem.

That's my experience on with my recently revived 2011 15" on OS X 10.12.6 with 10.10.5 being EOL for multiple applications. As ever it's very much a balance with older Mac's with far newer OS.

Q-6

 

[DouglasCarroll]

As ever it's very much a balance with older Mac's with far newer OS.

I agree with you in most cases, however I found on my MacBook Pro that "High Sierra" was to "Sierra" what "Snow Leopard" was to "Leopard", "High Sierra" seemed to be a refinement of the earlier OS with it being faster in all respects for me. I wasn't worried about the OS, just the performance on the older Air.

Good info from everyone!! Thanks!!

 

[Queen6]

I agree with you in most cases, however I found on my MacBook Pro that "High Sierra" was to "Sierra" what "Snow Leopard" was to "Leopard", "High Sierra" seemed to be a refinement of the earlier OS with it being faster in all respects for me. I wasn't worried about the OS, just the performance on the older Air.

Good info from everyone!! Thanks!!

2011 15" is best described as temperamental and needs some 3rd party apps to help reduce the usage of the infamous Radeon dGPU. Took a good time to bring it back online after being abused for many a year by several users then abandoned. Likely I'll update a bootable backup drive first and see how it fairs on High Sierra as currently it running better than when I first booted it in 2011...

Late 2011 15" 8.2 MBP 2.4GHz, 8GB, 750Gb HDD totally stock

Q-6