Can anyone techy tell me if this will actually help? do I need a new MacBook?

[TemptedbyNewLaptop]

I have a 5 year old MacBook Air - it gets very hot and is quite sluggish (sounds like me - having a menopausal moment!)

I have way too many emails but i sometimes refer back to them so am reluctant to delete
I am self-employed -work in social media and have lots of assets hanging about that could do with a big old clearout but that's also hard to find them all.
I keep a lot in the cloud
I know my digital footprint is TERRIBLE too
But would a new laptop actually help with this?

This is what I have currently
and am thinking of getting an M2 chip but it refers to 8gb memory - isn't this less than what I have currently?
I am confused.
Help gratefully received.

This is what I fancy

The 8gb refers to system memory and although 16gb is nice to have you can manage fine with 8gb. Personally I would prefer to have a 500gb SSD raher than 256 if you have a lot of stuff on your current machine
Whose email client do you use eg TemptedbyNewLaptop*@btinternet. com or TemptedbyNewLaptop*@AOL .com as emails can usually be accessed online and don't necessarily need to be stored on the laptop.

Aha.So I have a mac email address so I am [email protected] so maybe a lot of it is on my computer - thought lots is in the cloud.
Thanks for your reply @species5618

One of my questions is "isn't the 8gb on offer from the apple website LESS than I have now?"
Is the "unified memory" mentioned on the apple site the same as the "memory" in my "about" page?

Yes it is lower, and unfortunately with the Mac the memory is part of the M2 chip and therefore can't simply be upgraded by slinging in another bit of ram. Getting the 16gb version is ..... not cheap but you could view it as future-proofing

The same with the SSD size - again, you can't simply swap out the existing drive for a bigger one as the supplied one is a permanant fixture. The 256gb SSD (or Hard drive in old money) can be overcome to a certain extent by using an external drive for storage if needed.

8GB on an M1/M2 is equivalent to 16Gb on Intel silicon. Not an Apple fanbois myself, but I work with a few and that's their considered opinion.

I've swapped two 16Gb/i7 users to 8Gb/M1 and they seem happy little lambs.

Unless you are trekking to the back of beyond or working in a very niche area, I'd prefer a smaller SSD, since most work is done via the cloud anyway.