Advice Request What’s the oldest Mac OS you can run Windows 10 on please?

[MuzzMelbourne]

I have 27” iMac from about 2010 and need to run Windows 10 for studying.

Any chance?

Cheers.

 

[AlanOstaszewski]

Hello,
One possibility would be to run Windows 10 on your Mac in a virtual machine. Depending on what software you need for learning, it might work. However, software that is more demanding can run very slowly in a virtual machine.
Virtualisation software are for example VirtualBox and the best known: Parallels Desktop (but it costs money).

The better solution, however, would be to install Windows 10 next to MacOS. Keyword: Dualboot or Bootcamp. This way, Windows 10 does not run "virtually", but natively with better performance. According to Apple, this is not supported for your old Mac. Source: Install Windows 10 on your Mac with Boot Camp Assistant

You might try finding tutorials on the internet for your Mac. Maybe there is an "unofficial" way to do it. But you have to know a bit about computers. I don't think everything will work right away. I've read on the internet that some people have audio problems after installing Windows 10 on their old Mac alongside MacOS. So it's a difficult thing to do.

Maybe you can buy a new laptop. It would surely come with Windows 11 and last you for many more years. That would be my tip

 

[MuzzMelbourne]

Wow, thanks very much for all that. Fantastic advice.

Yeah, figured it would be a stretch. Just trying to avoid the inevitable recycling of the old darling! Couldn’t really be bothered tweaking this and that. Oh well…

Think I’ll buy a minimum requirement secondhand lappy. I can do about 95% of my course on my iPad Pro but need a command line type setup with some ports for network stuff.

Once again, thanks for the excellent reply, much appreciated.

Cheers.