There is just no way it is actually barely handling them. My 2012 with the dual core handles that. Fans turning on doesn't mean it barely handles it. That is just how those intel macs were. They were like that on day 1 in 2012. Spotlight indexing could be enough to spin the fans. Still does the job though even if its hot and noisy.
Depends what your criteria for handling are. The documents work, but navigation (like scrolling) is a slideshow, there is visible lag between pressing a key and character appearing on the screen.
When you switch between browser and Word etc, there is a lag, you can see screen being redrawn etc.
Yes, it "does the job". But experience is abysmal.
Even for the arm series macs the max cpus run way hotter and spin fans sooner than base model in general tasks. Just how those chips are designed. They aren't designed to throttle to keep temps down, they are designed to give you all the horsepower knowing you don't care about noise and heat and care about performance.
Its so weird, something i noticed (or made up) is that at my workplaces, the topspec workstations are always taking ages to boot (counting the ram?). My 15 year old xeon win box boots in about 10sec. Maybe they dont have fastboot enabled idk…
My workplace installs a ton of background software on their PCs. God help you, if it's your first time logging into any PC there and it has to load everything in your account/profile for the first time.
They don't last more than a couple of years before they start becoming painfully slow, even after being reimaged.
Whereas my 10+ year old laptops and desktops are as fast as the day I bought or assembled them.
If the computer has been overworked in the past, it permanently slows it down. Heat can permanently change the electrical resistance of the metal conductors in the computer's components.