I work online about 95% of my working day. The MacBook I had been using was 7 years old, only had 2GB of RAM and was getting ssllooww. The battery wasn't holding charged, it crashed or froze frequently, the cable was frayed. There seemed little point in fixing it up. What to do? What to do?
Easiest solution - buy another Apple! However, in these 7 years the sheen has worn off the Apple brand for me. They seem to be 'doing a Microsoft' - proprietary software, incompatible peripherals....and a Huuuuge price for middle-of-the-road performance (albeit in a gorgeous package)
So the logical way to go seemed to be a good laptop from Asus or Samsung, but I objected to paying a lot of money for something that didn't feel special...& I worried I'd need to replace it again in 3 years instead of 7.
So....my solution (after much research) was this: An Intel Nuc. It's a beautiful idea: for those who want the performance of a desktop PC without the ugly tower & noisy fans.
For £250 (from eBay) I have an i5 Intel processor, 8 GB RAM (and ability to expand), Solid State hard drive, and it just sits there silently looking purposeful. Then I just plug in what peripherals I need & I have a top of the line PC for a very good price.
I've been using it for a few weeks now & I'm very pleased with it indeed.