Used macbook, help me in this situation

[thedon1]

I have seen a macbook, 2007 model, 2ghz, 1gb RAM, 80GB HDD. I'm pretty sure it's a MB061LL/A. I am hoping to pick it up for £300.

It's for my parents. They currently have a dell laptop similar spec (about 3 years old) to the mac i listed but maybe more hard drive space.

The users of this laptop are not very computer literate at all. This hasn't stopped the pc from being totally wrecked. takes about 3-5mins for firefox to load up, loads of spyware, constant crashing etc. I could sort this with a reformat but there also seems to be a hardware problem where the computer will just lock up.

I thought about getting a mac as the user interface and stuff might be more user freindly but am just worried about picking up such a relaively low powered system.

Is the sacrafice of power for mac OS worth it? Will in a year or 2 this system still perform well?

 

[spinnerlys]

What is the computer used for? The MacBook with 2.0GHz might be more than sufficient for the needs of your parents.

As I don't know, how old your parents are, are you sure that a change of OS would do them good, especially as they are computer-illiterate as you say?

 

[thedon1]

Both of my parents use the pc for just internet, word and printing. No music, no videos, pretty much nothing else.

My dad is around 50, he's not bad with pc's to be honest, he's open to learning.

My mum is late 40s but really bad with tech in general. I gave here my iphone but she gave it back after a week. She doesn't even know how to use the address bar in firefox, google is the homepage and she searches from there. I need a way to educate her but that's a whole other issue.

 

[spinnerlys]

Then that Mac will be more than fine.


Also have them look at the following links, as the information presented there might be helpful in their future endeavours into Mac OS X and could clear up initial confusion and may even prevent harm to their system or their files.

Mac OS X Basics

Switch 101 - guide with articles made by Apple on how to accustom yourself, after you switched to Mac OS X from Windows​

Mac 101 - How to get started with Mac OS X​

Find out how - tutorial videos made by Apple on how to do certain thing in Mac OS X​

Pro tips - tips made available by Apple for easier ways of doing certain tasks​

Mac OS X Keyboard Shortcuts - Learn about common Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts.​

Mac OS X Beginner's Guide by MacRumors - learn about software, media players, shortcuts and some useful tips, tricks and hints​

Mac Guides - tutorials, product guides and more​

Mac Guides - Finding Mac Software​

MRoogle - a very effective tool to search these fora using Google and made available by edesignuk, introductory threads: 1, 2 and 3​

"How to maximise your MacRumors troubleshooting experience" created by mad jew in 2006​

 

[thedon1]

In my situation do you think switching to mac would help users like my parents?

 

[spinnerlys]

In my situation do you think switching to mac would help users like my parents?

If all they do is browsing, writing and printing then there is not much of a difference, just how they navigate the OS. I read lots of stories on boards like these about children giving their parents a Mac and those parents couldn't be happier, but it was seldom stated what kind of knowledge those parents had and what interest on switching they showed. As that Mac is using an Intel CPU, you can also install Windows XP, so your parents can decide what OS they use if they don't use the sleep feature that much.

 

[wordoflife]

I'd recommend upgrading to 2GB RAM