It took me 23 hours to add fully functional bt-core on my MAC. Downloaded bootstrap.dat and synchronised with network. Macbook is new, but process was so slow.
If you don't need the full functions, consider getting a light weight Bitcoin client. Full node requires CPU to verify blocks and memory space. They can be reduced by using a lightweight wallet as you do not need that much hard disk space because you do not need to download blocks. This is also the fastest.