Michrose wrote:
The mini I am expecting is: MAC MINI/10C CPU/10C GPU/16GB/256GB-USA.
Getting a Mac Mini with sufficient internal storage & memory is the best option and pair it with a good monitor as others have already mentioned. This is a much better option than another iMac or putting money into the 2017 iMac since when the Mini needs to be replaced you will still have your monitor which will save you more money (and it will save you money now as well over an equivalent iMac).
I have used half of the 1 terabyte of the hard drive on the old iMac. (Late 2017, 8 years old😉) I was planning to use some of the hard drive from the old one, as well as the monitor.
FYI, don't plan on using the internal drive of that old Mac, especially if it is using a Hard Drive or Fusion Drive since the internal Hard Drive is most likely worn out or failing after all these years.
If you want to attempt to repurpose that old 2017 iMac, then installing macOS onto an external USB3 SSD would be the best option as it would allow you to bypass the internal drive and also allow you to reuse the external USB3 SSD with another Mac once you decide to finally retire the 2017 iMac. As others have mentioned, installing more memory is unlikely to help with performance and you can easily determine whether lack of memory is an issue with your current workload by looking at the Memory Pressure graph in Activity Monitor.
Ugg Again, the Apple technician and I came up with this plan.
Does not sound like this Apple technician knows much about older Macs, or that tech just wants to sell you upgrades to a Mac that should be retired (at least for its current workloads if booting from an external USB3 SSD doesn't solve the performance issues).
Performance issues can also be due to running anti-virus software, cleaning/optimizer apps, and third party security software.....none of which are needed on a Mac and which usually causes more problems than they solve including huge performance issues.
