My 10 year old Mac is running El Capitan just fine. We use it as an auxiliary art workstation. Runs Adobe Illustrator CS3 perfectly well, as well as email, web surfing, etc.
We don’t switch out video cards because we don’t need to switch out video cards.
I call BS on the functional 12, 13, 14 year old PC’s.
As for a $100 PC, your frugality is only exceeded by your tolerance for a crappy PC...
This is the software that currently comes with a Mac:
Safari
Mail
Contacts
Calendar
Reminders
Notes
(Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders and Notes work together to make a very Outlook-like experience)
Maps
Messages
FaceTime
Photo Booth
Photos
iTunes
iBooks
Calculator
iMovie (robust video editor)
GarageBand (excellent audio/music editor)
Keynote (similar to Powerpoint)
Numbers (similar to Excel)
Pages (similar to Word)
There are additionally thousands of free and inexpensive app available in the App Store. Guaranteed virus free.
In fact, other than Affinity Designer ($34.99) a great vector-based graphic design program, I don’t believe we have bought any software for nearly all of our Macs.
You sound like the guy who didn’t like Mac’s because he didn’t want a one button mouse. Mac users will know how hilariously stupid that is...
Of course, the PowerPC system is older than the hills. Hey, it powers up. :)
My dad has some old pictures cad files that he cannot accessed any more because the software support was discontinued. Important files like family history, family trees.
Long story and Swordmaker has tried to help me. Thanks Swordmaker. Still no success. The problem: either the software is no longer available or the newer OS is incompatible.
One solution is to find old IMACs (the blue monitor) and try to convert the files that way. That never got far because my dad moved and we had to dump them. We had two.
Then there are my Apple music players and ipad. No support for them. Hundreds of dollars lost. Apple have a monopoly on their products and if they deem that a device is no longer supported, they can do it without dispute. They are the kings, the gods, of their hardware platforms.
Lastly...
One thing that would be nice is a $200 credit from Apple towards the purchase of the next gen device when the previous gen device is obsoleted. That would be fair.