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Ok, so my first generation MacBook is starting to show it's age, (and routinely frustrates me with it's minuscule 2GB of RAM) and I was looking at using my tax return to replace it.
I'm torn between the 11" MacBook Air with 128 GB of Flash Storage and 4GB of RAM, the 13" Air with same specs or the 13" MacBook Pro (Which has a backlit keyboard...)
The two Air models have the advantage of weight and both technically have more screen resolution than the 13" MBP. (The 11" is 1366x768, the 13" Air is 1440x900 and the 13" MBP is 1280x800. My current machine is 1280x800.) I primarily write on my laptop, so I'm still in the air on which one to get.
Price wise the MBP is the most inexpensive as configured at and then the 11" Air, and the most expensive is the 13" Air.
Any one have any one of these machines and able to give an opinion on them?
(In case you are wondering, the current machine will be going to a friend that has a use for a laptop. The MacBook and her iMac share the same exact specs... So she would already know how it would respond to her work load)
Samantha
Comments
Pretty neat...
...I've heard of air guitars, but air computers? There are some days when I feel like I'm writing with an air computer. Still, I suppose it keeps my fingers nimble.
Dio vi benedica tutti
Con grande amore e di affetto
Andrea Lena
Love, Andrea Lena
The beauty
of an air computer is that you have no need for a spell checker, or even a backspace! Just beautiful prose flows out, always. Wish I had one.
Sorry, I know nothing of Macs, the last Apple product I had was an Apple II that a friend gave my kids. I love the white case and the little backlit Apple on the lid though! I think it's a girl thing, don't you?
Hugs
Carla Ann
The Apple...
At one time the Apple on the lids was actually upside down when the lid was open. I always thought that was odd. I would have preferred a black case as I have a black dog so I can see every single hair that he leaves on my laptop...
This MacBook that I've got has lasted me just shy of 5 years, and it still has some life in it.
Samantha
Is portability an issue?
The MacBook Air is designed for maximum portability, so its storage space is less, and I believe its processing speed is actually slower than the MacBook Pro. If you don't plan to carry it around with you wherever you go, using weight as a criteria doesn't make sense.
Screen resolution only really matters if you're someone who works on multiple projects simultaneously and you need more screen area to have several windows open at once. Since you plan to use the laptop primarily for writing, screen resolution shouldn't be a deciding factor.
My rule of thumb for purchasing new computer equipment is to get the most machine you can with the money you have. Macintoshes tend to last forever (I have a closet full of old ones left behind by advancing OS), so you want a computer that will be useful for as long as possible. So my advice to you is to get the MBP and max out the memory and hard drive space with whatever money you have left in the budget. You'll have a fast machine you can depend on for years.
*hugs*
Randa
Portability
My laptop travels with me everywhere, it has even fallen down a flight of stairs. I've actually started doing most of my processor intensive stuff on my Mac Mini, Which is actually slower than my current MacBook. 95% of the time that I leave the house, my laptop is in my bag. I may not use it while I'm out, but I have it in case I need it for something.
I tend to run out of screen real estate at 1280x800. Between my web browser, Mail, and Scrivener, I'm constantly switching windows (or doing a fair amount of scrolling. One of the reasons that I'm considering the Air was the solid state drives. I do have that option on the Pro, just not the funding. I've considered my self lucky in the fact that I've never lost a hard drive *knocks on the desk*
The MBP provides more bang for the buck (plus a backlit keyboard for working in low light, which I sometimes do.) Also, after looking over the specs between the three laptops, the MBP actually weighs less than my current MacBook..
Samantha
Well, it depends on what all you want to do?
Two gigs of RAM is frustrating you? Unless you're doing video editing/playing games/never shut the thing off, 2 GB of RAM should be enough for just about ANYthing. So, what do you do with it besides write? That would be the important question, and relates to the screen resolution issue as well. If all you do is write and, perhaps, surf the 'net, then a Mac is kinda overkill all around since a netbook can be gotten for less than a quarter of the price and performs those functions admirably. Not only that, but if the OS is an issue then most of them are easily "Hackintosh" compatible.
Melanie E.
However, a netbook is ...
... cheap for a reason. It's usually nothing more than a small substandard laptop, built more for portability than for flexibility. The processors are typically slower and far from state-of-the-art, and netbooks usually have smaller, lower resolution screens, non-standard sized keyboards, and little if any expandability. Unless portability IS important, I wouldn't recommend a netbook for anything -- unless you want to pay as little as possible and get what you pay for. *grin*
Randa
The Air IS a netbook (well, kinda)
The MacBook Air is pretty much Apple's vision of a netbook: designed for portability instead of power. They went towards thinner instead of smaller screens, but the principle is the same (except you still can't stick an Air into a smaller bag). You get less machine (less storage, lesser CPU at least -- Core 2 Duo is budget-machine CPU on the Windows world nowadays), it is even available now on netbook-sized 11 inches... the major difference is that, being Apple, they get away with charging premium prices for it.
Not really...
The C2D's that Apple has put in the Air are not the equivalent of the Atom chips that the netbook Manufactures put in their machines. My wife and I had a roommate with an HP Netbook, and she was always complaining about the speed. It took her forever to open Outlook, and every time she did, she complained about it. Netbooks are meant to do light work when you are away from your desktop. The Air is designed to be a users only machine, if they so choose. Also, the 11" Air provides more resolution in a clearer display than any Windows (or Linux) based netbook that I've ever seen...
Someone actually did a study and compared two machines (one Dell XPS 1330M and a 13 MBP) and discovered that after adjusting the specs on the XPS to match the specs of the MBP that the price difference was $95. The MacBook Pro was the more expensive of the two machines (but then again it was forged out of a single block of aluminum... There has to be a cost factor in there somewhere for that...)
Samantha
Well, As I sit here and
Well, As I sit here and type this, I have 59MB of RAM free, and that's running my OS, Safari (Web), Mail, and Scrivener (My writing software). I'm starting to see lag when I'm typing, which really drives me nuts.
I prefer the readability of the Mac beats any type of reliability of Windows that I've ever had, including from the NT 4.0 line. My mom has one of those HP netbooks and frankly I think that thing is a POS and it's keyboard is horrible to type on... They also feel like they are cheaply made...
Samantha
It just seems odd
That so few programs would use so much RAM to me is all. None of those are processor intensive, for one thing. I have 3 Gb or RAM in my laptop, but I upgraded it specifically for better performance when playing games. Even then, I can have a game (let's say Neverwinter Nights,) my OS Windows 7 (obviously,) Mozilla Firefox with between 3 and 8 tabs at any given time, MuTorrent, Yahoo! Messenger, and VLC Media Player all running and just be starting to approach the 2 Gb mark -- and that's considering that the OS on its own routinely runs me around 850 Mb.
Macs tend to run a lot more efficient than Windows machines, so I'm just having trouble seeing why 2 Gb or RAM isn't enough to run your programs easily. If those are all you're using, then perhaps all that's needed is a RAM upgrade -- again, cheaper than a new computer, and it might do you just as well.
Melanie E.
That's true. You can never ...
... have too much RAM. And since RAM is cheap, it might be a good idea to upgrade it first (if there's room for more RAM -- some older machines max at 2 GB) just to see if it makes a difference. Also, your hard drive might be fragmented, leading to a lot of seeking back and forth to put files together. A disk backup, reformat and restore could do a world of good.
Of course, getting a new Mac laptop with more RAM and copying everything from the old to the new would be the same as far as defragmentation is concerned. And there's nothing quite like the first time you get new tech to play with, is there?
Ah, gotta love being a geek girl! *grin*
Randa
Geeky Girls
I'm a geeky gir! This machine maxed at 2GB (it's 32Bit) and has served me well since 2006, even though it's been back to Apple threetimes. The first time was for the Random Shut Down issue, the second was when I had the inverter for the display start to fail, and the third and final time was when the headphone jack got stuck in optical mode and wouldn't come out of the mode. They replaced the logic board on that one...
I actually just did a wipe and reinstall, I have a friend that has a 13" Air and he was like you carry around so much that you can't use a 256 GB SSD. So I, just to see if I could do it, compressed what I carry around down to 17GB... I could, in theory use the base MacBook Air and still be ok on space...
Samantha
I've never figured it out either....
But upgrading the RAM is out of the question, as this machine is Maxed out at 2GB. I may need to compress my mail databases and that might help, Safari lists it self as taking just shy of Half a Gig with six tabs open. Everything else is less than 100MB of RAM (This is physical ram, not swapping) There are also a handful of other apps that run in the background. Most of the time I'm not paying attention to it, I just know that if I were to launch Photopshop (or Aperture) my MacBook would slow to a crawl...
This is a light day in terms of running programs. I usually have iTunes running, as well as Adium (Instant Messaging)
Dont' get me wrong, I'm not saying this computer is broke or worthless. It just doesn't meet my needs as well as what it once did. In PC standards this machine would have been replaced already. As a matter of fact, I replaced it last year about this time... Then my dog decided that my seven month old laptop needed a drink of coffee... He's lucky he's still alive...
Samantha
Wait a bit, perhaps?
You can get the MacBook Air right now if you want it. It's cute, but it's a slower and more limited machine than a Macbook Pro; if it serves your needs and if you travel, then that might be the way to go. The entire MacBook Pro line is due for a refresh sometime in April. If you want a MBP, I recommend waiting until the refresh happens. Personally I'll be getting the 17" MPB when it appears. No, it won't fit in my purse. But I'll be getting a new purse big enough for an iPad II, when those appear.
- Moni
That will be hard for me to do.
If I tried to sit on that much money until the refresh, I think I would go nuts. There were reports that one of the controller chips for the Sandy Bridge line of processors (More commonly referred to as the i3, i5, and i7 series of processors) has an issue and there are people saying that it could delay the refresh... I wonder if we will see SSD drives standard after the refresh...
Samantha
Strange things...
You know, I've seen some strange things in my 29 years on this Earth, but this one really baffles my mind.
Currently I have 507 MB of RAM free, with 5 applications running: Firefox, Adium, Mail, Scrivener, and iTunes. Compare that to earlier when I had Safari, Mail, and Scrivener running with 59MB Free. I know Safari was hogging the memory, but Firefox is using half of what Safari used with the same pages open....
Odd things...
Also, after doing a lot of pondering, I think I'm going to go with the 13" MBP, even though there is a refresh coming up. The Core 2 Duo in my Mac Mini has served me well, and I don't do much that won't run on a C2D. The Air would work, but I can upgrade the MBP when it starts to run out of RAM and hard drive space...
Samantha