HARDWARE

This page contains articles on Macintosh and peripheral hardware. Suggestions and contributions for this page may be sent to the webmaster or any group officer (see the Officers section of the "About" page on this site).

CONTENTS
Adding Memory
Peripherals
Recycling Hardware
Where to buy computer gear
Where to get your computer repaired

Adding Memory

Older computers often do not have enough RAM memory to run newer operating systems or some newer Applications. The first sign of memory shortage is that the computer gets slower that it used to be. For Catalina (OS-X 10.15) we recommend that you have 8 Gbytes or more. If you plan on doing a lot of graphic work, making movies, or composing music with GarageBand then you should consider getting more at least 16 Gbytes.

Peripherals

What is a peripheral? Any device that plugs into a mac's input ports keyboards, mice, hard drives, CD/DVD reader/burners, scanners, audio/video sources, etc. A comprehensive discussion of all of them would take days to recite.

External hard drives

There are several types of connection on modern Macintoshes: USB 2.0, USB 3.0, USB-C, and Thunderbolt. Sizes range from 1 Gbytes to 10 Gbytes or larger. External hard drives are plug & play (i.e. you can just plug them in and use them without lots of setup problems), and most are hot swapable (i.e. they can be plugged in and unplugged while the computer is running without any ill effects).

When purchasing a new external hard drive, this is a great time to decide whether to partition the disk (see article on how to do this).

Prices: roughly $60 for 1Tbytes to $150 for 4Tbytes external drives, usually bundled with backup software (though you might want to delete the backup software in favor of other backup systems, including Apple's Time Machine ).

Recycling Hardware

There are many ways to dispose of your old computer equipment that are environmentally acceptable. MAGIC offers the chance to swap, sell, and buy equipment with other members - see the Swap Page of this site. Island Recycling in Freeland and Coupeville will accept all electronic equipment for recycling for free (thanks to a new State program that funds recycling) - they can be contacted at (360) 331-1727.