It’s not a matter of the OS version, it’s a result of unplugging a drive while data is being written to it.

I’m honestly surprised the titanium PowerBook survived a drop like that at all. They fell apart from normal use.

Yes, and even though I’ve only forgotten to eject it a few times, one of those times was enough to corrupt the drive to the point where I had to reformat it and lose my backups.

A computer with 16GB of memory is going to remain useful longer than one with 8GB memory. That was pretty obviously my point. Please spare me your misguided pedantism.

You would be fine with an Air. 16GB of memory would future proof it so it lasts you longer. What you described is definitely not a “Pro” workflow though.

Ones that are used at least once a month:

2021 16” MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 32GB, 1TB - still blazing fast.

2012 15” MacBook Pro, 16GB, 500GB SSD - has had the logic board and battery replaced, running Ventura well with OCLP, my wife uses it daily.

2002 PowerBook G4, 1GB, 60GB SSD - use it mostly for playing DVDs and old games. Runs OS 9 crazy fast. Original battery still lasts about an hour.

1998 PowerBook G3, 250 MB, 2GB HD - use it for retro games. No repairs ever other than a making a new PRAM battery last year.

I have other MacBook Pros that have been retired that I don’t use anymore. A 2014 and a 2010. Also a 1997 PowerBook 3400c that is non-op.

“JUST chrome open (admittedly a lot of tabs)”

I think you underestimate how resource intensive tons of tabs are, especially in Chrome.

Wipe and reformat the HD, install an SSD if it doesn’t have one, and use Open Core Legacy Patcher to run the latest version of Mac OS on it. It won’t be powerful, but would be fine for browsing and basic work.