Low End Mac began as a hobby in April 1997. Although it was a successful commercial venture for a while, it is now a user-supported online resource that covers almost everything Apple: Macs, both old and new, and iPhones, iPads, iPods, Apple TV, Apple II, Newton, and some other tech as well – especially vintage stuff. If you’ve found Low End Mac a helpful resource, please consider making a donation via PayPal by using the Donate button below.

Funds received help pay for our mobile service, internet access, hosting, a portion of household utility bills, some back taxes, and eBay and PayPal fees. We are on eBay as Tech and Collect, since we sell more than just Apple gear through our small online store.

I do have a few 17″ iMac G5 and several Power Mac G5 computers for sale – local pickup only. (No boxes for the iMacs, and you don’t want to pay shipping on a Power Mac G5!) Contact me if you’re interested.

I have a few items I would like. If you can help out, I’d be most grateful.

To Revive Some of Our Hardware

• Replacement keyboard for a 2009 15″ MacBook Pro – the machine was donated but a previous owner managed to cut some of the traces on the back of the keyboard.
• Power supply for a dual-processor Power Mac G5 – one of ours is dead.
• Power supply for 21.5″ 2009 or 2010 iMac – ours overheats and shuts down.
• Lower capacity SSDs (32 GB is enough for a full OS install, and 240-256 GB is plenty for most of the machines here). Preferably 6 Gbps SATA Rev. 3 and backward compatible with SATA Rev. 1 and 2.
• A copy of Photoshop Elements compatible with OS X 10.11 El Capitan.

Dreaming

• Someday I’d love to replace the 2.0 GHz 2007 Mac mini, which acts as a file server and Photoshop station, with a 4-core Mac Pro or Mac mini that can run OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. A nice alternative would be a 20″ or 21.5″ iMac (Early 2009 or later) that I can boost with 8 GB of memory.
• Someday I’d love to find an affordable Internet service that’s a lot faster and less expensive than Comcast. I think we all dream of that!

If you can help with any of these items, please email me at articles (at) lowendmac (dot) com – and thanks!

More About Low End Mac

I began publishing Low End Mac (LEM) in the early days of the World Wide Web as a way to learn about Web design and to help other Mac users get the most out of their aging Apple gear. That focus has never changed, even though the Apple spectrum is much more diverse these days. (Back then, Steve Jobs was newly returned to Apple and many wondered if Apple would survive.)

Those who write for Low End Mac try to live the low-end philosophy. I don’t draw a paycheck from LEM, and neither do our writers. We are volunteers.

How I Benefit from Low End Mac

I do benefit from publishing LEM. The business, such as it is, pays for my mobile phone contract and the internet service for our home office. It pays for hosting and services that help keep spammers out of the comments and hackers from messing up the website.

It gives me an excuse to work with and write about aging Macs – my main machine is a 2.4 GHz 20″ Early 2008 iMac with 6 GB RAM (its maximum), OS X 10.11 El Capitan, and an old, too full hard drive that needs to be replaced with an SSD. Next newest is a 2.13 GHz Mid 2009 white MacBook with a 160 GB hard drive and 4 MB RAM (need to upgrade to 6 GB someday), and I also have a 2.0 GHz Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook with 8 GB of system memory, which is pretty low-end by today’s standards, and an SSD. It also has OS X 10.11 El Capitan on one partition.

My main working computer for years was a 2.0 GHz Mid 2007 Mac mini with 3 GB of system memory and OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. This is my Photoshop machine, because I don’t want to have to pay for a newer version than Photoshop Elements 6.0. I also have a Late 2005 Power Mac G5 Dual with 3 GB of system memory set up with OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard, which I use on occasion.

Two in Need of Repair

I also have a 21.5″ Mid 2010 3.06 GHz i3-based iMac that I would love to use, but it has some hardware issues and needs a thorough cleaning, a new power supply, and new thermal paste, as well as replacing its 8-year-old hard drive with an SSD. It has 12 GB of RAM, can run macOS High Sierra nicely if I want to, and was my main production Mac until the overheating problems took their toll. Once this is repaired, the 20″ iMac will replace the 2007 Mac mini as a file server and Photoshop machine. (I don’t like buying new software if I don’t have to, and Photoshop Elements 6.0 is more than enough for me. But it doesn’t like newer versions of macOS.)

We had a Mid 2009 15″ MacBook Pro donated to Low End Mac, but it needs to have its keyboard replaced before it is usable. It’s probably a sweet notebook with plenty of power (2.8 GHz), but it only boots in Safe Mode and acts as though Caps Lock is enabled at all times. Using an external keyboard doesn’t fix these problems.

The Latest Addition Is from 2006

My latest addition is a wonderful 2.33 GHz Late 2006 17″ MacBook Pro with 4 GB of RAM. I love the aluminum-look keyboard and the huge 17″ display. Hitachi 250 GB 7200 RPM hard drive with Snow Leopard and OS X 10.7 Lion partitions – this was the first Mac that I used Lion on!

We don’t spend much on hardware and software. All our recent hardware acquisitions were donations, except for replacing our laser printer a couple years ago – and donations paid for that. We’re frugal at Low End Mac, but that hasn’t been enough to get by on ads (we only display one) and affiliate income.

LEM Is in Recovery Mode

At its worst, site traffic dropped to 12% of what it had been in 2007, when we averaged 1.43 million pages per month; ad income has dropped even further. We are slowly rebuilding from our low point in April 2014. But even with our uptick in traffic, we don’t receive enough from advertising to cover expenses, so we depend on readers for support. Hosting, internet access, mobile phone service, utilities, and taxes come to about $250 per month.

Low End Mac has always been a community-based service. Our goal is to receive $400 in monthly donations so we can take care of some repair, and a number of you are already helping out. We hope to see more of you join our monthly support team, and we also hope a lot of you will make one-time donations to support LEM as well (use the Donate button above).

To set up an ongoing monthly donation, click on the Make This Recurring (Monthly) checkbox when you get to PayPal.

If we receive more than we need, we’ll be able to budget for some more used Mac gear. I’d really love to have something that can run OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard as well as current versions of OS X and with USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, putting me a bit closer to modern standards without reaching for a quad-core i7 CPU. (Hardware donations are gladly accepted!)

Low End Mac is a hobby. My work schedule gives me little time to work on LEM except on evenings and weekends when I’m not working.

Spread the Word

Tell your friends who use Macs, iPhones, and iPads what you think of Low End Mac. (We also have some content for PC and Android users.) If you have your own website or blog, add a link to http://lowendmac.com/ If you use Facebook, Twitter, Google +, or LinkedIn, follow us there and share our links with your friends and followers. This should also help improve our Google rank, which is important to rebuilding site traffic.

If you run a business and would like to buy ad space on LEM, please contact Backbeat Media.

Spread the Wealth

We accept donations through PayPal, and snail mail. Our goal is $400 in monthly support – every dollar helps.

• PayPal is the most popular method for donating funds to Low End Mac. You can use the Donate button on the right or above to make a one-time donation or sign up to support us monthly. Note that PayPal charges 30¢ per transaction plus 2.9% of the amount donated, and there are additional fees for international currency exchange. This amounts to about $40/month for us.
• If you prefer not to send funds electronically or want to ship us equipment, mail them to our home office: Cobweb Publishing, Inc, 215 Ivanhoe Ave NE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546. Please don’t send anything with a signature required – I work third shift and sleep days.

Shop Online

Please click on some of the ads and affiliate links on our site and learn more about the businesses that support Low End Mac.

If you sign up for eBay via this link, we will also receive a small fee.

Yet another way to help is through affiliate programs. If you shop through any of the following links, the vendor will recognize that your purchase came through Low End Mac and send a small fee our way.

Thank you for your support.

Dan Knight, publisher, Low End Mac

Short link: https://goo.gl/M9cJ4i