Is this laptop worth upgrading? Windows & macOS questions

Background:
The reason I'm posting in this subforum is because I think I'll get more replies with this kind of old HW. I've tried upgrading an Emachines 1.9 GHz Celeron Penryn with 4 GB RAM by doing a clean install Windows 10 on an SSD. After the upgrade it got 100 % CPU load for the most basic tasks, still making everything slow, although much better than with a HDD of course. Maybe it had some HW issues, I don't know.

Now I've been asked to upgrade a friends Macbook, It's from 2009 and has a 2.26 GHz Penryn CPU and 2 GB RAM. This will be a backup laptop, and will just be used for simple tasks every now and then. I have my doubts for doing this, thinking it's too old and slow because my experience with the Celeron.

1 - Would you recommend upgrading a 2.26 GHz Penryn and use as a second laptop?

2 - Does the OS make any difference with this old HW in terms of everyday usage?

 

Tell him to buy a new one. Technically it can handle everyday tasks and such, but the graphicscard will die on him soon.

 

You can't do much besides basic browsing even with MacOS optimizations, so just get a new PC

 

that's his goal, its meant to do basic stuff such as web browsing, youtube etc. however the tesla mobile cards are absolute trash.
Most are already dead.

 

My 2009 has a 8400M (GS) surprisingly not dead yet.

 

give it time :'D

 

It's actually a non-Pro so it has a 9400M. I have no idea if this model is just as bad as the 8600, but I've never heard any such claims.

Yeah, youtube is a pretty good benchmark for what kind of work this laptop will do, and that's not even at 1080 resolution.

 

still tesla, it's pretty much doomed to die soon.

 

What kind of "upgrade"? Memory? CPU?

This machine will not, IIRC, support anything more recent than OS X 10.7, and I don't believe it's getting security fixes any longer.

Memory-wise, I don't think anything from that era goes beyond 4GB, which is better but not all that much so. You could run a compact Linux distribution on it to get more life, but you're stretching it pretty far.

 

SSD and RAM. It's currently running 10.11, and 10.13 is supposed to work. It works with up to 8 GB.

 

I thought the cutoff was around 2010; apparently not. The question is whether the amount you'll save will make it worthwhile, given the likely shorter remaining lifetime of this laptop vs. a newer one.

 

Yeah, I know. Maybe it's not worth it, but the owner isn't prepared to buy a new Apple, partly because there are enough computers available to use anyway.

I still don't get this GPU argument. Yes, the 8600 was a big failure, but this is a 9400. Can't find any info about it being just as bad, only the opposite.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/06/nvidia-gpu-failure-fallout-continues-apple-extends-warranty/

Anyway, thanks to you all for helping me out here, much appreciated. I'll probably test with an old SSD first to see how it works before buying one.

 

Just a follow up.

The Penryn Macbook (A1342) got upgraded with an SSD and went from 2 to 4 GB of RAM, together with a fresh install of High Sierra. The result was really good, it works very well for Office, internet and media, etc.

 

I'm still confused about what I saw when testing the two laptops though.
The 1.9 GHz Penryn still seems to stall quite often with 100 % CPU load, even after getting an SSD with a clean install. (Yeah I didn't think the SSD would fix the CPU load, but that the reinstall would)
The 2.26 GHz Penryn works well for what it's used for.

Is the L2 cache size the reason for this? 1 MB vs 3 MB. RAM speed and size is the same, but bus speed differs.

https://ark.intel.com/compare/37258,42014

 

It helps a bit, but WIn10 with all the services running as default it will be painful to use, at least kill superfetch, windows search and disable drive indexing, it will use a lot less cpu.