Would 4GB be fine for my mother?

[poiihy]

The current requirement for Yosemite is 2GB, meaning that if you have 2GB, you can run the OS and still get some useful work done.

Ballpark guess, that might mean that the OS takes up 1GB and then you have 1GB available for your software.

So if you have 4GB RAM, that means you have twice the minimum necessary and (hypothetically) three times the amount of memory that Apple thinks you might need to do something useful.

That's not going to become outdated soon.

2GB is terribly slow when you have a hard disk drive. 2GB might be ok on the Air because of the flash.

 

[jojoba]

You might want to try a BT mouse. I use mine with the Magic Mouse that came with my Mac Pro.

Lou

That's a good point, I have a magic mouse that I don't use, I could give her that to play with. Thanks

 

[troy14]

That's a good point, I have a magic mouse that I don't use, I could give her that to play with. Thanks

You can also just invert the scrolling (in system prefs, trackpad, natural scrolling) so she doesn't have to relearn her ways

 

[TLmac]

Heck, if would probably be enough for most of us much of the time, as long as we didn't open 60+ tabs at once.

This is SO me! Right now I'm surprised I only have 3 open!

That's what I'm trying to decide for myself...is a MBA ok or should I go for the MBP...

 

[Mike MA]

Just equipped my father's new Air with 8 GB. Does he need them? Probably not.

Why did I do it? Just wanted to be on the safe side for the next couple of OS X releases.