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John asked: “I have a Macbook Pro, probably 12-15 years old. It is extremely, extremely slow. Talking about getting a new hard drive. Anything I can do to make it faster at my house? I have dial-up at present. This time next year, I’ll have high speed.”
John, you can definitely upgrade your hard drive, and you may see better performance from that, but if your computer is between 12 and 15 years old, a new hard drive will only go so far.
It may be older than YouTube.
Even the 3 years between your estimates of 12 and 15 might make a computer start to feel older, 12 or 15 years is an eternity in terms of computers. Just think of it this way, if your computer is 12 years old, not even the full 15, it’s from 2005. That means that it may be older than YouTube.
The MacBook Pro was introduced in 2006 — that’s 11 years ago. Chances are you don’t have a Pro at all, but what we used to call a PowerBook. Dating aside, John, you’d be wasting your time sinking your cash into Mac over ten years old as of this broadcast. You’re opening yourself up to a hell-strew of hacking vulnerabilities running outdated version of MacOS. Also, the kind of hard drive that would help you — a solid state drive — won’t even work in your machine. John, it’s time to buy a new computer. It doesn’t have to be “new” new — just “new” to you! Check out eBay or Gazelle.com for a recent (at least 5 years or younger) Mac.
At this point, you’re probably better off putting the hard drive replacement money towards a new computer.
One thing we should mention is that no hard drive, or new computer will make a dial up connection faster. If you feel your internet connection is slow, you’re right, and only better service will fix that.