I use acronium. Really basic app with daily notes section and many other things. Good thing about it is that I use it both on my pc and my phone and it syncs very well. Finding stuff is easy too.

Kind of. Latest releases aren’t supported officially but you can safely install Monterey (10.12) with OCLP. No data & performance loss.

You are very right. It only gets the job done but that’s about it. Seeing new Macbooks going on for hours and hours, it’s impressive.

And good thing about 2012 and early models is that you can upgrade parts. Maybe find a 4GB model for cheaper and upgrade it.

Lastly it gives me about 4 hours of battery life, doing school work (presentations, documents). If I use PhotoShop, it lasts 2 hours and I call it a day.

I recently got a second hand mid 2012 Macbook Pro for roughly 150 USD. I live in a third world country and I would call that a good deal. It has 8GB ram, 250GB SSD. 3rd gen Intel CPU but gets the job done.

I use PhotoShop very much, besides school work. You can maybe find something similar on eBay.