Back in July of last year (System Upgrades – Richard Freeborn), I detailed the results of changing out our router and the improvements we had as a result.

Since then, I’ve been working around increasing issues with my MacBook Pro. The speakers died some time ago, and plugging in an external speaker wasn’t too much of an issue, especially as the general sound quality was much better.

The track pad and bluetooth were another problem. The track pad developed a mind of its own, sending the cursor all over the screen, or just not responding. That meant a separate wireless mouse. Again, not a big problem. What did bother me more is that the bluetooth keyboard would for no reason stop working. When I investigated further the MacBook had turned off Bluetooth, and the only way to get it back was to shut down and restart.

And then there were the software updates. About a month ago, Microsoft informed me they couldn’t upgrade Word and Excel because the operating system was too old. Can’t be, was my first thought, and then I did some research.

The MacBook Pro was nine years old, which explained the pieces failing every so often. I really didn’t really want to buy more hardware at the moment, but hardware has a mind of its own, so I was back at the Apple store looking at options.

My first thought was an iMac, but it looked to be older Apple technology. I didn’t want to bite that hook, and a few months later see the release of a whole new iteration. I’ve experimented with using the iPad on travel trips, and it works well, so I didn’t see the point in another laptop, which led me to the Mac Mini.

The immediate drawback appeared to be no keyboard, mouse, or monitor. Wait – I’ve already added those onto the laptop, and one thing we have in the house is plenty of spare monitors. No camera? Again, we have those sitting on a shelf not being used. So I ordered the Mac Mini. It arrived two days earlier than scheduled and as soon as I plugged in the keyboard, mouse, and monitor, it asked me if I wanted to connect to another Apple device and copy from that.

Now, Apple has tricked me before this way with my iPad, but I was prepared to give it a try, and surprisingly the Mac Book and Mini talked to each other and about five hours later everything was up and running on the Mini. I had some problems with license counts on some applications, and the Mac Book Pro NTFS app doesn’t work with the Apple M2 chip. Both took a little time but were easily resolved.

Total time to upgrade and iron out the kinks? Less than a day. It’s the easiest upgrade I’ve ever done.