I hand down my old laptops and phones to the kids who happily use them for years. Sometimes I try to hand down an update and are met with resistance - this (old) one still works fine, why should I change? When they do, they're stunned by the performance improvement. They are still going through the Intel to Apple Silicon transition.
Recently I got an 11-inch, Mid 2013, MacBook air back, and decided to get it going. The battery was completely dead. I paid $45 for a battery on AliExpress. They are easy to install on the 11 inch Airs and the battery came with the two screwdrivers needed.
There was quite a lot of dust and fluff to remove but the fan still moves well. My daughter got very good use out of this machine. It has a few dents in the edge but the screen is good and all the keys work. (I've done a lot of cleaning with a cotton bud but more to do). What's striking is that she's typed so much on it that the most used keycaps have worn the labels off them.
Even with "just" 4GB of RAM, the machine is surprisingly usable for email and web surfing. But being stuck on macOS 11 means that there are many apps that won't run and lots of sites complain about the version of Safari.
Some apps, like my beloved BBEdit, still keep old versions available.
I love the compact size of these and the fact that I could replace it for under $200 if the need arose means that this would be a good laptop to take somewhere where it might be stolen or damaged without too much anxiety.
Apple should make a new compact laptop. I love my modern Air but would be very attracted to something smaller for my messenger bag.
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