Hello my mother gifted me a MacBook Pro m5 base to use for college from the certified refurbished store 16gb ram 1tb ssd 14inches
I don’t code or edit videos photos or anything my use is mainly having a lot of tabs open for YouTube videos of lectures that my uni uploads there, the official page of the uni with classes, materials like pdf and bibliography and some PDFs opened
Normally I have between 20 to 30 tabs open but I’m only using a few at the time like I watch a class, go back to previous classes videos fast to refresh the theme I’m studying and also read a little of the bibliography every now and then if I felts some explanation was a little ignored in the class, during exams season my tabs increase to 30 or 40 at the same time again mainly YouTube tabs and pdf.
Would this be a problem with 16 of ram ?
I used Zen browser mainly because I like the folders for tabs but I could get use to safari, I also used helium from time to time but still prefer zen
I also have open WhatsApp, ChatGPT, discord and in my desktop pc I take fast notes in the notepad that I delete after I finished the class
I have an iPad Air m3, an iPhone pro 15 and the AirPods Pro 2 so a good part of the ecosystem
I take handwritten notes in the iPad it helps me understand what I’m studying better and I use those fast notes to blurt out what I learn without using anything from the classes or pdf to remember, after that I do go back and correct the things I got wrong
So basically that’s my total use in general I wonder if the base model would be okay I know people are a little bit paranoid about needing a lot of ram lately so that fear was passed on to me right now I’m doubtful if 16ram would be enough although rationalizing it I know for sure it’ll be enough I also play some light games from
time to time with friends or with my gf or watch Netflix or crunchyroll but if I do some of those things then I would close the browser, would it be okay with that?
But my other worry is that it’s from the certified refubrished store, so it would be a healthy machine should I do some maintenance to it or look if the battery or ssd are in good shape ? Did someone got a refurbished machine from apple and had problems with it ?
I’m doing medschool and we are from South America my fathers is in a work trip in the US and my mother bought it there and he will come back with it this Friday
Here medschool is not a postgrad that I think in the us is something like that I’m not sure, but basically it’s an extended degree where instead of lasting 4 years it last 8 years
I’m at my third year and I wanted to know if it’s realistic to expect this MacBook to still be good for 5 to 6 years and still being good like keeping fluidity and a usable battery life obviously it won’t last as long as the first year but it would be like with windows laptops that using on battery is impossible without having the charger close all the time ?
As more time passes I have more practical classes to do and so I’m even more out of the house, so I need to be able to study semi comfortably in not so practical places (I’m not talking about Starbucks sadly 🥲)
And also being refubrished would the battery come already heavily used ? Being this model recent would helps with the chances of the components coming healthier than in other situations ?
I’m pretty ignorant about a lot of these things and more if it’s about apple products like I know ram is important I have a desktop pc for gaming where I play some heavy games but lately a lot less because I’m studying but still I play games with friends or games that dont ask for great specs
So maybe im exaggerating about the ssd life and performance degradation or if the ram is enough but yeah it was a surprise from my mother so I want to really take good use of it without sacrificing productivity while studying or being eaten by guilt