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Upgrading mid-2010 MBP to High Sierra?

I have a 17inch mid-2010 MacBookPro, that has served me very well so far. Have maxed out the RAM (8gb), and installed a 1Tb SSD many years ago, at which point I could upgrade to El Capitan, which worked instantaneously on the SSD, and still works fine for most things I do, however Safari, even Firefox doesn't really work well anymore with many pages, thus was thinking to upgrade to High Sierra (which is the last version for this machine) - is it worth the hassle, and get rid of the issues with Safari, Firefox, etc, or not, and/or will it slow down the computer? Many of the features of High Sierra is not compatible with this laptop, so not sure if it's not just a lot of burden on the processor/RAM? Also what version of the MS office would still work well after upgrade? (currently using 2011....) Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Many thanks!

MacBook Pro 17″, OS X 10.11

Posted on Aug 30, 2023 9:09 AM

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Posted on Aug 30, 2023 9:53 AM

High Sierra is not dramatically different from El Capitan (in terms of hardware requirements), but does offer much more recent versions of Safari. I would not hesitate to do that upgrade. Don't forget to apply ALL possible Software updates once installed, which will install an even more recent Safari.


The "approved method" before begging ANY operation that will re-write over 350,000 files is to have a Trusted Backup on hand before you begin.

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Aug 30, 2023 9:53 AM in response to szladob

High Sierra is not dramatically different from El Capitan (in terms of hardware requirements), but does offer much more recent versions of Safari. I would not hesitate to do that upgrade. Don't forget to apply ALL possible Software updates once installed, which will install an even more recent Safari.


The "approved method" before begging ANY operation that will re-write over 350,000 files is to have a Trusted Backup on hand before you begin.

Aug 30, 2023 10:05 AM in response to szladob

I'm familiar with where you're at. I just recently upgraded from a 15 inch mid-2010 MacBook Pro (running High Sierra) to a new 2023 model. Is it worth the hassle to upgrade your machine to High Sierra? That's up to you. I, probably, wouldn't expect a marked improvement in performance. You're still hindered by the age of your hardware (in my opinion). Your issues with Safari and Firefox may stem from the fact that you cannot use the newest versions of those browsers (with the latest security updates) because of the older OS. I experienced browser issues, as well. I sought out faster browsers. (Was using Brave, for a while. Now, the old Pro can no longer run the newest version of it.) I believe Office 2016 is the newest version that can run on High Sierra (with the caveat that Microsoft is no longer supporting it). I can't comment on performance. I was using 2011 on High Sierra with no issues.

Upgrading mid-2010 MBP to High Sierra?

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