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retta283

Suspended
Original poster
Jun 8, 2018
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My friend found his old 11" 2010 Air and offered to sell it to me for a really great price. However since it has a 1.4 GHz Core 2 Duo and a 320M I am worried it will be really sluggish. I also am considering buying it and putting Lion or Mountain Lion on it. It would be replacing my late 2008 uMB. My main machine is still my iMac so I don't need power to edit video or anything, just something to view content and email while on the go or in bed. Also, I'm interested in how the screen quality compares to other MacBooks.

Part of me wants to buy it just because I was there when he unboxed it in 2010... But I need to buy new machines for my work soon, so I only want to buy this if it is going to be useful.
 
My friend found his old 11" 2010 Air and offered to sell it to me for a really great price. However since it has a 1.4 GHz Core 2 Duo and a 320M I am worried it will be really sluggish. I also am considering buying it and putting Lion or Mountain Lion on it. It would be replacing my late 2008 uMB. My main machine is still my iMac so I don't need power to edit video or anything, just something to view content and email while on the go or in bed. Also, I'm interested in how the screen quality compares to other MacBooks.

Part of me wants to buy it just because I was there when he unboxed it in 2010... But I need to buy new machines for my work soon, so I only want to buy this if it is going to be useful.

You're worried if a 9 year old used 11" MacBook Air will be slow? I think you should think about what you just wrote because you answered your own question yourself :D
 
You're worried if a 9 year old used 11" MacBook Air will be slow? I think you should think about what you just wrote because you answered your own question yourself :D
Have you ever used an old MacBook with an SSD? My 2008 uMB with an SSD runs High Sierra very well. And mine was very well used when I got it
 
Have you ever used an old MacBook with an SSD? My 2008 uMB with an SSD runs High Sierra very well. And mine was very well used when I got it

Retta, u re going upgrading old with old, why not going for 2014-16 systems, even when u move to an SSD SATA/EIDE, your PROC/RAM will be the same ~2010, 9 Yrs. ago.
 
My friend found his old 11" 2010 Air and offered to sell it to me for a really great price. However since it has a 1.4 GHz Core 2 Duo and a 320M I am worried it will be really sluggish. I also am considering buying it and putting Lion or Mountain Lion on it. It would be replacing my late 2008 uMB. My main machine is still my iMac so I don't need power to edit video or anything, just something to view content and email while on the go or in bed. Also, I'm interested in how the screen quality compares to other MacBooks.

Part of me wants to buy it just because I was there when he unboxed it in 2010... But I need to buy new machines for my work soon, so I only want to buy this if it is going to be useful.
If it has 2 GB RAM then probably not worth it. If it has 4 GB then maybe, but only for basic tasks like web browsing.

The Core 2 Duo MacBook Airs are notoriously underpowered, in fact your 2008 Unibody MacBook has a more powerful processor despite being two years older (though the 2010 Air with the 320M has better integrated graphics). The switch to the Core i-series in 2011 finally made the Air competitive in terms of performance, but the soldered 2 GB RAM is still a problem on the 11" base model from that year.
 
The 11” 2010s are quite underpowered for many tasks unfortunately. Couple its weak CPU with the 2GB of RAM most of those shipped with and you have a very laggy experience. Even a year later, the 2011s are much more usable machines due to their much better CPU.
 
I ended up passing on the MBA, figured it wasn't worth the time. I was mostly concerned with the 2 gigs of RAM, which his model had. I told him to get the Ultimate when it came out, but he only intended on having it for a year or two so didn't go for it. Thanks guys.

I might look for a MacBook Pro to replace my 2008 uMB in the future. The uMB performs quite well for my needs, but the screen quality is terrible.
 
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