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Looking into MBA; coming from MBP

Tyler23

Tyler23

macrumors 603
Original poster
Dec 2, 2010
5,664
159
Atlanta, GA
Hey everyone,

I currently have a 13" mid-2009 MBP. It has a 250 GB hard drive, 2.53 Ghz processor and 4 GB RAM. Getting married soon, and would rather have a smaller, lighter computer to use around the house and take on trips.

We're only using about 100GB of the HD currently..so space isn't really an issue.

Looking at the 11" MBA, great size and weight, and with the SSD should be a bit faster than the MBP which has begun to show its age, somewhat.

What do you all think of the 11" MBA? With upcoming wedding expenses, we're looking at the 11" instead of the 13" to save a few bucks, and don't have any real need for the extra screen space.

Looking forward to hearing some feedback. Thanks :cool:
 
0007776

0007776

Suspended
Jul 11, 2006
6,473
8,170
Somewhere
I've been using an 11" MBA as my main computer for getting close to a year now, and it's been great. I'm sure it would struggle with some games, and high end video editing, but for what most people use their computer for it works good enough. Before this computer I'd been using a 13" MBA for 4 years or so, and a 12" powerbook before that, going to the 11" air it took maybe a couple days to get used to the smaller screen size, now I wouldn't go back to a larger one. So I'd recommend that if you want a smaller and lighter computer than your MBP get the 11" air, you won't regret it.
 
Boyd01

Boyd01

Moderator
Staff member
Feb 21, 2012
7,689
4,572
New Jersey Pine Barrens
Tyler23 said:
I currently have a 13" mid-2009 MBP. It has a 250 GB hard drive, 2.53 Ghz processor and 4 GB RAM.

What do you all think of the 11" MBA?
Click to expand...

I had a 2008 15" 2.4ghz/4gb/160gb MBP (about the same as your machine) and replaced it with a 2011 13" i5/4gb/256gb MBA. I found the CPU to be almost twice as fast and disk access probably 5x as fast. The 2013 MBA is maybe 30% faster than the 2011 MBA, so it's not just going to seem "a bit faster" - it's going to run circles around your old MBP. :D

A few weeks ago I replaced the 2011 13" MBA with a 2013 11"/i7/8gb/512gb MBA. I really like it - very cool to have such a powerful computer in such a tiny package.

Looking at the Geekbench numbers, my 2008 MBP was about 3300 and my 2013 MBA scores about 5800.

I use it mostly at home with a big monitor and external keyboard, so size doesn't matter there. When travelling, I'm willing to accept the small screen as a reasonable tradeoff for portability. If my use pattern required a lot of use of the built-in 11" screen, I might feel differently. Text can seem very small sometimes, depending on the application.
 
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