I Ordered a New Laptop

[Tall Timbers]

When the old person's familiar platform is Atari or Amiga, it's probably time to upgrade
2MB memory- we'll never need more than that

Yes, it's definitely time for you to upgrade!

 

[Tall Timbers]

I'm debating about if I need a new laptop. Currently I have a 2017 Macbook Pro with MS Office installed (not the cloud version).

It's running fine, but I've had laptops crash unexpectedly so I want to try to avoid that.

Any ideas?

I don't know much about the Apple side of things, but if it were me, due to the age of your laptop, I'd get a new laptop and keep the old one as an emergency backup for when/if something goes wrong with the new one. You should be able to install your MS Office on a 2nd laptop and leave it on the first in case you ever need the old one. Turn the old one on every once in a while to get updates to the OS.

 

[Tall Timbers]

It's likely some of the updates.

One of the things I've made a practice of doing is downloading updates for manual installation... then I've got the updates forever so I can easily update new installs of the same ancient programs I'm running. Some companies are sneaky. Corel in some cases will delete the update file after the update is complete so I need to make a copy of the update file and put it in it's own folder before I start the process. In some cases where I couldn't download updates to do manual installs the companies stopped supporting that version and it can't be updated any more.

 

[Ghoti Ichthus]

Yes, it's definitely time for you to upgrade!

You mean no more FORTRAN and tubes?

 

[Tall Timbers]

You mean no more FORTRAN and tubes?

...and you might as well toss out your computer punch cards.

 

[Ghoti Ichthus]

...and you might as well toss out your computer punch cards.

Maybe the card sorter can get donated to a tech museum . . .
And the card punch/reader, paper tape punch/reader, and all the magnetic tapes, spare reels, tape reader, and the giant 60 inch optical discs?

 

[Tall Timbers]

Maybe the card sorter can get donated to a tech museum . . .
And the card punch/reader, paper tape punch/reader, and all the magnetic tapes, spare reels, tape reader, and the giant 60 inch optical discs?

Yes, stop hoarding that stuff for a rainy day and donate it all to a museum. Believe it or not, newer computers aren't backwards compatible with some of that stuff.

 

[mattfivefour]

But some of that hardware makes good boat anchors.

 

[Ghoti Ichthus]

In case of EMP . . .

 

[Baby Yoda]

Yes, stop hoarding that stuff for a rainy day and donate it all to a museum. Believe it or not, newer computers aren't backwards compatible with some of that stuff.

Hubby has one of the original Apple computers in our basement. Won't let me toss it, insists it's worth money.

 

[Tall Timbers]

Hubby has one of the original Apple computers in our basement. Won't let me toss it, insists it's worth money.

I wonder if it actually is worth something. That might depend on how many of them survived until now. I have some $2 silver certificates. They're worth just a tiny bit more than $2 and they're a lot older than the original Apple computer.