What iwould be the best used mac to buy

[maclover12]

I am looking to get a mac for school that i am going to change the hard dive and upgrade the memory which mac would be the easiest to do that with?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

All MacBooks and all the Unibody MacBook Pros are easily upgradeable with another HDD or SSD and more RAM:

MacBook, MacBook Pro: Replacing the Hard Disk Drive, transferring data to the new HDD​

How to format a new HDD/SSD to install Mac OS X or make a bootable copy onto​

Upgrading RAM in MacBooks and MacBook Pros​

As for what Mac is the best, that does entirely depend on your computational needs. Best is always subjective, thus no objective conclusion can be had in this regard.

 

[maclover12]

If I am just using word safari and playing games would I be ok with a ssd and 8gb of memory?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

If I am just using word safari and playing games would I be ok with a ssd and 8gb of memory?

You would be okay with 4 GB, unless you have dozens upon dozens of tabs open in Safari.
It also depends on the games you play, if they are Flash based (CPU intensive) or actual installable games like Skyrim or something, as they are often highly GPU dependent, and the MacBooks are not made for gaming, though the newer ones with the Nvidia integrated graphics processor (IGP) are quite okay.

I guess you have a budget and already some model in mind?

 

[maclover12]

Yes i want to build my own desktop and the leftover money will be spent on a laptop. i want the last model of the white macbook. are those pretty quick?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Yes i want to build my own desktop and the leftover money will be spent on a laptop. i want the last model of the white macbook. are those pretty quick?

Yes, for your needs (except maybe the gaming, depending what you mean with gaming) they are quick enough and an SSD and more RAM will definitely help.

 

[maclover12]

What i mean by gaming is that playing games from the app store and some online. Also would you buy one used if it is in great shape?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

What i mean by gaming is that playing games from the app store and some online. Also would you buy one used if it is in great shape?

Games from the app store and online have system requirements, look for them, though online games are often Flash based, thus you might get away with an older model.
As said before, the MacBooks with the Nvidia IGPs have better graphical capabilities, which limits your purchases to 2009 and 2010 MacBooks.

I don't know, if I would buy a used MacBook though, as I am more the MacBook Pro type, though I probably will have to at some point, as I will not buy 2012 or later Macs (as they come with Lion).

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[maclover12]

ok thank you very much! so snow is better than lion

 

[simsaladimbamba]

ok thank you very much! so snow is better than lion

For me it is.
Some people have problems with Lion, especially with the removal of Spaces.
Imagine going from this

to this

if you are a person actually using so many virtual desktops. But for most consumers, and especially for your usage, Mission Control (Lion) is more than fine.

Also have a look at this:

Helpful Information for Any Mac User by GGJstudios​

 

[Medic278]

I run lion on my late 2011 MBP and love it. MY previous machine a 2008 MacBook ran Snow Leopard. I actually prefer Lion it is a very smooth operating system. While the loss of spaces is unfortunate, the way lion has it setup is still very user friendly. So either way it depends on what you like and is very subjective everyone will have different opinions on it.