Recommendation for Macbook Air 11"/13" equivalent

Cassady

Cassady

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Hello all.

The wife is not loving her 15" Dell - too bulky for her job requirements, where she meets plenty of clients out and about.

We're looking at a smaller form-factor laptop. I'm a Mac user - and have pretty much lost track of what's happening elsewhere.

What would be good options for something similar to a MBA?

In other words, 11/12/13", light, long battery life. She mostly uses Outlook, a bit of excel, and needs a bit of storage for photos - but we can probably work around that: 500gb ample, 256 at a push. 4gb RAM minimum.

Since she has a Dell - I had a quick look today at that size range. I am clearly missing something - since the models I saw started at 15k and all went up??

At that price range - the MBA might as well be looked at! Any recommendations for something cheaper than a MBA, but similar size?

Appreciate the help!
 
Cassady said:
Hello all.

The wife is not loving her 15" Dell - too bulky for her job requirements, where she meets plenty of clients out and about.

We're looking at a smaller form-factor laptop. I'm a Mac user - and have pretty much lost track of what's happening elsewhere.

What would be good options for something similar to a MBA?

In other words, 11/12/13", light, long battery life. She mostly uses Outlook, a bit of excel, and needs a bit of storage for photos - but we can probably work around that: 500gb ample, 256 at a push. 4gb RAM minimum.

Since she has a Dell - I had a quick look today at that size range. I am clearly missing something - since the models I saw started at 15k and all went up??

At that price range - the MBA might as well be looked at! Any recommendations for something cheaper than a MBA, but similar size?

Appreciate the help!
Click to expand...

Look on Digicape's classified section to find a 2nd hand MBA.

There might be a lot more for sale, as theres a new model being announced on 24 Feb.
 
Pegasus said:
Look on Digicape's classified section to find a 2nd hand MBA.

There might be a lot more for sale, as theres a new model being announced on 24 Feb.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Check those myself. It remains an option - but she's a bit nervous to try OSX - doesn't want to lose time in the readjustment, which is why I'm trying to find a Windows machine as a replacement.
 
Dell Latitude 7240, small, light, fast as hell, and you can get build in 3g card if you want! Run Win7, 8.1 or 10
 
Okeyyyyy. R22k and up for the Dell 7240... Still better off with an MBA then.
 
PostmanPot said:
Nothing.

Dead serious.
Click to expand...

That's what it looks like, incredibly. Those small netbooks-type lappies - they probably don't even make them anymore?? And they were pretty useless in any event, correct?

Cheaper looks to equal bigger. Smaller looks to equal expensive.

I honestly figured there would be something available in the size the of a MBA (granted, not as thin but still light), in a 11/12/13" form-factor, that would be cheaper???
 
Cassady said:
That's what it looks like, incredibly. Those small netbooks-type lappies - they probably don't even make them anymore?? And they were pretty useless in any event, correct?
Click to expand...

Netbooks are/were useless as far as I'm concerned, underpowered CPU, minimal RAM usually non upgradable, terrible keyboards and trackpads, crappy TN screens, and overall cheap quality.

Cheaper looks to equal bigger. Smaller looks to equal expensive.
Click to expand...

Ultrabooks do tend to be more expensive, unless looking at gaming laptops (yuck).

I honestly figured there would be something available in the size the of a MBA (granted, not as thin but still light), in a 11/12/13" form-factor, that would be cheaper???
Click to expand...

Couple of decent build quality Ultrabooks from Dell, Asus and Samsung (Series 9). Nothing on Macs though.

Lastly, I would strongly suggest a Retina MacBook Pro over a MacBook Air. Small price increase for much more power, screen quality, etc. 8 hours battery. Almost as slim and light as an Air.
 
PostmanPot said:
Netbooks are/were useless as far as I'm concerned, underpowered CPU, minimal RAM usually non upgradable, terrible keyboards and trackpads, crappy TN screens, and overall cheap quality.



Ultrabooks do tend to be more expensive, unless looking at gaming laptops (yuck).



Couple of decent build quality Ultrabooks from Dell, Asus and Samsung (Series 9). Nothing on Macs though.

Lastly, I would strongly suggest a Retina MacBook Pro over a MacBook Air. Small price increase for much more power, screen quality, etc. 8 hours battery. Almost as slim and light as an Air.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Will have a look at the Sammy's and Asus, and explore the Dell's more properly.
 
broken1 said:
Dell XPS 13 is great. 2015 edition even better
Click to expand...

That's the 1st one I checked. Great reviews, even the trackpad is compared favourably to the Macbooks. But a (again) cursory glance also has it priced at the highend - and then one may as well go with the MBA.
 
I've got a year old 13" MBA with 256GB flash hdd. It's hardly been used. I think the battery count is on about 10 charges. R11K.
 
For the kinds of uses you've described and the Office requirement, a Mac obviously looks pretty good. You can even try nab a 20143/2014 MacBook Pro in good-to-perfect condition if you want to keep the price down. Put aside some money if you possibly need to run Parallels and Windows in a VM for any applications that don't work in OS X.

The benefit to getting a regular laptop over a MacBook is that the SSD/HDD and RAM is usually user-replaceable, so you can always get more storage later on, rather than having to keep things on an external or trade up for a Mac with a larger SSD (or pay the ridiculous premiums that Apple puts on their flash storage options). While there are several options available now, none of them really come close to what Apple offers in terms of hardware and UI scaling. ASUS has the UX305FA with Broadwell-Y inside, which gives you big battery life boosts over Haswell, but the scaling issues present in Windows 8.1 mean that the 2560 x 1440 display really isn't going to be great.

Also, Safari and Expose are pretty awesome. There's a lot to like there. The iWork suite isn't bad either.
 
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