MacBook Pro 11?

[ffutures]

 Laptop problems are not improving, if anything the shift key thing is getting worse.

It looks like CEX sell a 2014 model 13" retina display MacBook Pro 11,1/i5-4308U 8GB Ram 256GB SSD for £245 - that's for grade B which means some cosmetic wear but I can live with that. No optical drive but I can live with that too. At the moment that seems to be about the best deal around. Are there any horrendous problems with that model I should be aware of?

Comments

[vivdunstan]

I’d be a bit concerned about that RAM size myself, but it may be fine. With an old Mac you will be limited how new you can go with MacOS. I think with that model you can upgrade to Big Sur (11). But you may find newer OSes struggle more on the older machine. Logic board failures are the traditional problem with Mac laptops, so there’s always a chance that could happen. But it is low cost. But what is its battery life like? That’s what I’d probably most worry about re a very old laptop. Or will you always be using it on power? Good luck!

[ffutures]

Good points - but 16GB adds £100 or more, and I've been OK with 8GB up to now. Battery life is always a worry with older laptops but I've changed the batteries in the current one a couple of times, and from what I can see on youtube they haven't made it horribly difficult in later models. As for the motherboard, it's got a year's warranty which will hopefully be time to find any immediate problems.

[ffutures]

Sorry, make that £50 more for 16GB - might be worth considering.

Except that as I typed the above the right hand shift key started working again, for the first time in years which is VERY strange, and the left one seems to be working a bit better. I think I'm going to hold off on making a decision for a while, and see what happens.