vesta822 wrote:
Mr H. et al:
Thank you! Very helpful. I definitely want a laptop, but I will look at the "Mac Mini" (not familiar with that machine) for cost efficiency.
Mac mini is the cheapest Mac.
The current version of Mac mini is a tiny desktop box that can be hooked to your keyboard and mouse, and to your chosen display.
Question: Given your and others advice on this platform, I want to move ahead with a new machine. Here's my dilemma:
--Spoke with Apple store rep who said the genius folks can guide me on identifying content on the old MBA that is obsolete, corrupted etc-so I don't transfer it over the new machine. They also told me a separate genius appointment could sell me the new machine, then transfer backups from my XHD. My photos are kept on a thumb drive, and photos on my current MBA app, I imagine, would have to be transferred to that thumb drive too, correct? Or would they just get uploaded randomly when content is transferred to the new machine. Cost to me: ZERO.
You’re following the more-effort path here, but, well, sure.
Your McBook was purchased as one of the least expensive configurations, which usually means it’s more effort and more patience. It’s quite undersized for what you’re doing with it now, all discussions of its relative hardware age aside. You’re probably using that thumb drive because you just don't have room for your photos, for instance.
--Or I could use a reputable Apple Certified Support specialist that I know. $185/hour - which includes alot of hand holding, but alas via the specialist, there would be no hands on contact-just remote cursor on my machine via her software.
That’s up to you. I’ve used variations of Setup Assistant and Migration Assistant for years, or very occasionally started over after migrating (or manually dragging specific files and documents. The migration tools are painless, and deal with all of the common causes transparently.
If you’ve somehow gotten corrupt files, that’ll have to be dealt with on a per-file basis.
Prefer the 'free option' from the apple -sounds a bit too good to be true-but specialist would be fine, given my lack of tech know-how.
The prices that Apple charges for their hardware effectively include some services, and getting a user migrated onto a new Mac can be one of those.
Allowing Apple to transfer it all and preferably to also get those photos relocated into Photos app (if not already) may well be feasible with a Genius Bar appointment here, too.
But again, you’ll need enough memory and storage for the transfer. For the recently-updated Mac models, 16 GB of memory is the minimum available, and 16 GB is what you’ll want here. Not 8, if whatever Mac you find still offers that. You’re somehow also fitting into 256 GB storage here (“more effort”), but with some unknown amount of stuff such as your photos located elsewhere, and with how badly Macs will work when storage is nearly full, and also given ~everything gets bigger including macOS and apps and our own data and usage, I’d go for larger storage capacity.
You’ll also want to get an external hard disk for Time Machine backups. The hard disk should have two or three times the capacity of your internal storage, minimally.
