> Funny how those free devices end up costing as much or more as just
> buying the right one new to start with. :)

TANSTAAFL, I'm afraid. With Apple kit, it's slightly worse than that: *everything*, both hardware and software, is subtly incompatible with everybody else's, even unto the EFI boot loader (despite, I hear, Apple being on the EFI standards committee). More to your point, I found it impossible to find a switch which could share one monitor between multiple Apple systems, and resorted to physically moving the monitor connector between them.

Don't forget, Apple make their money by shipping hardware; putting people on the upgrade treadmill guarantees that this continues to be the case. Apologies for being cynical about Apple (who are far from the only such offenders), but I had to support multiple users of their kit for a living, and got immune to the *shiny*.