MacBook Air or Pro

D tj said:
"Lack of ethernet is retarded. The dongle will cost you a USB slot and an extra thing to get lost. There are thin and light computers which somehow have retained ethernet which is still a useful thing."....Nope! Thunderbolt > Ethernet...still have your x2 USB 3 ports.
With the cost of these, you don't loose them too easily!:)
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Hehe. The Air comes with ONE TB port. If you want to connect that to a storage device and then need ethernet, then what are you going to do? I guess some storage devices have TB pass through. Either way I think it means loss of functionality and stuff gets lost or is another thing to carry around. Your super light device then becomes less convenient to use.
 
After much vacillating and research, I have also decided to go with the 13" Macbook Air! The biggest (actually the only) hitch for me was 'other file downloads' - as I wasn't sure if I could safely download them using OS X. I have recently passed on my Packard Bell i5 laptop to my mother; and I have not been able to get Kaspersky with a forgotten password off my desktop for more than 2 years! This has now been sorted out and I am happily downloading my 'other files', and I am free to get the Air.

I have contacted iStore for a quote and ETA on the upgraded specs version, and so the waiting begins.... :D. I suspect that should the order take too long, I will just go and get what's available.

P.S. Thanks for helping me decide!
 
What spec's did you settle for?

LizGroen said:
After much vacillating and research, I have also decided to go with the 13" Macbook Air! The biggest (actually the only) hitch for me was 'other file downloads' - as I wasn't sure if I could safely download them using OS X. I have recently passed on my Packard Bell i5 laptop to my mother; and I have not been able to get Kaspersky with a forgotten password off my desktop for more than 2 years! This has now been sorted out and I am happily downloading my 'other files', and I am free to get the Air.

I have contacted iStore for a quote and ETA on the upgraded specs version, and so the waiting begins.... :D. I suspect that should the order take too long, I will just go and get what's available.

P.S. Thanks for helping me decide!
Click to expand...
 
I am waiting to find out how much the i7 and 8GB RAM will set me back on the 256GB SSD version. According to apple.com it is $1,479.00 on the educational package, but I have no idea how much the import tax and whatever other costs will be.
 
LizGroen said:
I am waiting to find out how much the i7 and 8GB RAM will set me back on the 256GB SSD version. According to apple.com it is $1,479.00 on the educational package, but I have no idea how much the import tax and whatever other costs will be.
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Let us know. I phoned the I store at Sandton drive and they told me to take a screen shot from the apple website to get a quote and that it would take 8 weeks
 
LizGroen said:
I am waiting to find out how much the i7 and 8GB RAM will set me back on the 256GB SSD version. According to apple.com it is $1,479.00 on the educational package, but I have no idea how much the import tax and whatever other costs will be.
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Are you getting a 4 core i7 CPU or a 2 core i7 CPU? If it's a 2 core CPU, the difference between similarly clocked i5 and i7 CPUs is very small. They have a little more cache and that's all. Even a 2.3 to 2.5GHz difference is not much.

Check with cpubenchmark.net which sort of CPUs you're looking at and compare their relative performance. It's often not worthwhile to go from i5 to i7 if the number of cores is the same.

Likewise if you're not gonna be using your computer for hardware intensive things a quad core will just be idling. It won't be much faster vs dual core in real world usage for Youtube, Facebook, Email and MS Office.
 
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LizGroen said:
I am waiting to find out how much the i7 and 8GB RAM will set me back on the 256GB SSD version. According to apple.com it is $1,479.00 on the educational package, but I have no idea how much the import tax and whatever other costs will be.
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If you can find a similar machine NEW on Ebay, you can often see if Global Shipping is available. That often shows you a shipping and customs/duty estimate.
 
But my Gosh the MBA is a clunker. 13 inches = 1.5kg. Heavy as heck. There's no excuse that now NEC is pumping out 13.3 2560x1600 Sharp IGZO display 795g i7 machines. Even the June model was 1600x900 13.3 inch screen, 256GB SSD, 4GB RAM and MS Office 2013 Business and at 875g. Air, my foot.
 
roughiain said:
Let us know. I phoned the I store at Sandton drive and they told me to take a screen shot from the apple website to get a quote and that it would take 8 weeks
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Same here, but don't know if I can wait that long now that I've made up mind!
 
Space_Chief said:
Are you getting a 4 core i7 CPU or a 2 core i7 CPU? If it's a 2 core CPU, the difference between similarly clocked i5 and i7 CPUs is very small. They have a little more cache and that's all. Even a 2.3 to 2.5GHz difference is not much.

Check with cpubenchmark.net which sort of CPUs you're looking at and compare their relative performance. It's often not worthwhile to go from i5 to i7 if the number of cores is the same.

Likewise if you're not gonna be using your computer for hardware intensive things a quad core will just be idling. It won't be much faster vs dual core in real world usage for Youtube, Facebook, Email and MS Office.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice - I have no idea how many cores, but I'm thinking that maybe I won't need the quad. My Packard Bell was stock standard with a much older i5 chipset and only 4GB RAM, and I never felt the need to upgrade even the RAM.
 
LizGroen said:
Thanks for the advice - I have no idea how many cores, but I'm thinking that maybe I won't need the quad. My Packard Bell was stock standard with a much older i5 chipset and only 4GB RAM, and I never felt the need to upgrade even the RAM.
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Sure. Just remember that the main advantage of the i7 is the greater number of cores. An i5 always comes with 2. An i7 desktop CPU always comes with 4. BUT for laptop CPUs, an i7 can be a 2 core or a quad (4) core CPU. The 2 (dual) core i7 is not much faster than a similar clocked i5. So the benefits of a two core i7 for laptops are questionable. Yes they give you maybe 10% speed increase but that's not really worthwhile.

An i7 with 4 cores will be about x2 as fast as a Core i5 of similar speed. But you're gonna need that speed. If your CPU idles, an i5 idles just as well as an i7. :)
 
Mac Book Air:

1.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 2.6GHz) with 3MB shared L3 cache

Configurable to 1.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz) with 4MB shared L3 cache.
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Your basic performance increase is the greater clock speed from 1.3 to 1.7. The extra 1MB of cache should not add too much performance gain on top of that. If budget is an issue, I'd stick with an i5 and rather get more internal storage and RAM, if that's possible.
 
My 2013 MBA is surprisingly snappy. I do wish I had at least 8GB or RAM though, I'm always using more than 4GB. Don't really notice when I'm swapping though.
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
My 2013 MBA is surprisingly snappy. I do wish I had at least 8GB or RAM though, I'm always using more than 4GB. Don't really notice when I'm swapping though.
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What sort of usage are putting yours through program wise - Office/Photoshop?
 
roughiain said:
What sort of usage are putting yours through program wise - Office/Photoshop?
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Nothing too hectic but some memory hogs. I always have both Chrome and Firefox open with numerous tabs, Outlook, Netbeans (don't judge me - this uses a crapload of memory), MAMP, Excel with large 100K+ spreadsheets.

I don't use Photoshop but I'm pretty sure it would be fine for most tasks.

Screenshot%202013-11-29%2016.18.47.png
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
Nothing too hectic but some memory hogs. I always have both Chrome and Firefox open with numerous tabs, Outlook, Netbeans (don't judge me - this uses a crapload of memory), MAMP, Excel with large 100K+ spreadsheets.

I don't use Photoshop but I'm pretty sure it would be fine for most tasks.

Screenshot%202013-11-29%2016.18.47.png
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Sounds impressive. Still waiting for my quote on the 8 gb one before I pull the trigger
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
Nothing too hectic but some memory hogs. I always have both Chrome and Firefox open with numerous tabs, Outlook, Netbeans (don't judge me - this uses a crapload of memory), MAMP, Excel with large 100K+ spreadsheets.

I don't use Photoshop but I'm pretty sure it would be fine for most tasks.

Screenshot%202013-11-29%2016.18.47.png
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I want/need more ram too in my MBP. :o

Screen Shot 2013-11-29 at 2013•11•29 16.58.07 .jpg

This was with Aperture doing a resize/export, photoshop generating a large contact sheet and with safari/firefox/chrome all running with multiple tabs.
 
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