[gasman]

My wife has a 2012 Macbook Pro (i7/2.9Ghz/8GB ram) she uses it primarily for photos (iPhoto) and making calendars and the such with web based software such as mix book and shutter fly. She also does some light office work with the basic MS Office Suite.

She has recently been complaining that the computer is getting slow and is bogging down. I suspect there are also battery problems, so after 5 years it might be time for a new computer.

The price of a new macbook almost made me puke (for a mid range macbook pro I am looking at $2300 for an i7/2.3Ghz/16GB)

Now my question is the specs on the new model seem worse than the old computer, I would hate to shell out $2300 for a computer that sucks worse. Is there something I am missing with the specs?

I also considering a macbook air i7/2.2Ghz/8GB which would run about $1900 but would at least have full size USB ports.

The other piece of information is that we both recently migrated our phones from apple to android, so the integration with iPhoto is not really needed. We are going to be migrating that to Google Photos soon.

Any suggestions for what to replace her computer with? I would like to keep it below $2000, and closer to $1500 if possible. We aren't married to the apple os.