Need a new comp for bills and def not pron

I’m old and currently do all my bills on a iMac 27” all in one that’s about 15 years old. It’s so old it can’t even be upgraded to the new Mac operating systems. I wanna scrap it but keep a desktop because it’s how I like to do my finances. I’ve found some macs on Amazon but I don’t understand why these are less than half the price they are on apples site. I know some are refurbished but that doesn’t bother me too much.
Computer will be used 95% for paying bills and the other 5% is nunya biz

https://www.amazon.com/Apple-MD093L...keywords=mac+all+in+one&qid=1574215569&sr=8-7

 

I upgraded an old hp laptop that was forcefully upgraded to win 10 and took over 4 minutes to boot to the desktop. I wiped it and loaded it with a light weight linux distro (lubuntu) and it boots in seconds, does all I need for simple webstuff and can even use it to record audio podcasts.

 

Those are refurbished computers, and "they" say they've been fixed. Personally I wouldn't buy one, but they say . . . Anyway, if you keep your computers for over 10 years, I think you can justify buying a new one. You don't say where you are in the macOS world or what software you use but I'm assuming it's Mac specific. You should check and see that your software will play nice with the latest OS.

 

I have snow leopard

 

Wow - Time for an upgrade.

 

They have a free El Capitan upgrade but I don’t have enuff memory. I ordered a 2 gb card so I’ll see if this works. If not then maybe Christmas time.

 

Yeah, the newer mac os's are RAM hungry but that is to be expected. The single best bang for you buck upgrade is replacing a spinning drive with a SSD.

 

I stuck the $17 card in and upgraded to elcapitan. It’s running muuuuuuch better.

 

Instead of tossing your iMac in the scrap heap, download and install Linux Mint 19.3 in place of your old Mac OS. The easy way to do this is to create a live USB drive with the Mint image, then boot that USB by plugging it in, powering on your iMac and pressing 'alt/option'. The built-in apple boot-manager will present you with an option to boot macOS, plus an option called "EFI Boot" designated by an external drive icon. Select this second entry (use your arrows keys and press enter). Your iMac should boot to the installation menu of the live Linux Mint image on your USB stick.

The iMac drivers you'll need are integrated in the Linux kernel that Mint uses. If Linux Mint 19.3 works on your iMac (and it should as long as your hardware is in working condition) it's an excellent choice in that it's fully supported until 2023.