El Capitan vs High Sierra vs Mojave

[Cindy~]

Hello all,
I am new to this forum;
I have a 2013 iMac and 2012 macbook Pro and still running El Capitan on both. Debating to update to High Sierra, Mojave, or stay with El Capitan. Any suggestions?
Cindy

 

[boppin]

El Capitan.

Runs cooler on my 2012 Retina Macbook Pro

 

[madrich]

Still on El Capitan, I don’t need the Dark mode, etc.

 

[DeltaMac]

El Capitan is no longer getting security updates from Apple.
Sierra still gets those, but will likely stop when the next macOS is released in about 6 months.
High Sierra might be a good choice, and gets you down the road another couple of years.

But, Mojave is the last macOS system that will still run 32-bit apps (such as MS Office/Word/Excel 2011) some of which I still depend on.
Dark mode is also not my fav, so I don't use it (did modify it so i have a dark dock and top menubar). And, I don't experience any of the kinds of challenges that some others report. Mojave is quite stable for me, being 5 "dot" versions, and seems pretty mature at this point.

So, I would recommend going to Mojave at this point (unless you have an iMac with just a spinning hard drive, which will prove to be a bad choice for Mojave. Even a fusion drive is better, with best choice being an internal SSD.

 

[velocityg4]

First check the software you use and version. See if people are having trouble using it in High Sierra or Mojave. If they are. See if anyone has found a workaround.

I'd just go to Mojave and be up and running on the latest version. If you go High Sierra. You'll just be wondering if you should go ahead and upgrade to Mojave.

If you are willing to spend some time and money. Upgrade your HDD to SSD. They're pretty cheap now and improve performance a lot. If either only has 4GB RAM. You'll be pressed for RAM in either OS.

 

[ATC]

I'm running High Sierra on my unsupported iMac 9,1 and I don't see any performance degradation compared to El Capitan. The reason for running 10.13 for me is that Safari open tabs sync is no longer supported in El Cap with devices running iOS 11 and later, but are fully supported in HS.