You say:

> specs in line with what I see on dell.com as still available in new systems

But I'm not sure if you mean the relative performance of an entry-level chip like the N100 or the raw numbers like "6-8 core, 3.8GHz" - the performance may be fine for your use-cases but doesn't actually compare to decade-newer chips like M2 when pushed.

> Apple still delivering some software updates yearly

They deserve a lot more credit for this transition than the PPC-Intel one, that's for sure...