13" MacBook Air or 13" MacBook Pro?

camperdown9 said:

Hi

Yesterday when Steve announced the new MacBook Air I thought great thats what I want for Christmas.

However when I looked at the Apple site and also an unboxing video it became clear that I would want the 13" model. (No SD card reader on the 11") I would also need the air super drive and when I price that up in UK pounds the total would be £1164.

For an extra £85 I could have a MacBook Pro 13".

I use my current MacBook mainly for the internet (5-6 hrs a day),plus Word, Email, iTunes etc. It leaves home one or twice a month, so weight is not really an issue.

My current MacBook is slowing down so my question is which is better for me, the MacBook air 13" or the MacBook pro 13"?

I know nothing about this side of computing but the Pro seams to have a faster processor, would that effect my internet speeds. I mean would I notice the difference in processors when on the net?

I have an iPad but rarely use it for the internet as it seams so slow compared to my MacBook.

Advise please?

Alex

Click to expand...

I have quite a bit of data on an external firewire drive. With the tiny storage footprints of these new MBA machines, I would want to have firewire rather than only USB. This pushes me to consider MBP over MBA. If, however I already had an MBP or iMac on my desk and already had an iPad and was looking for a more powerful machine than iPad, I would definitely want the new MBA. Otherwise I would think the combination of MBP and iPad would do better than having only an MBA.

For me the issue is drive space. I'm sitting in front of an overstuffed MB with less than 20 gig free. It is connected to a firewire drive where I moved a lot of music and other bulky files. If I got a new MBA, I would have to "live without" these files whenever I was away from my desk. I could care less about the optical drive. I could easily live with either an external or a network based optical drive but I'm less comfortable with network based main storage. While I think an iPad with 64 gig is more than enough, I think a "real computer" with only 64 gig would not be enough for me unless I rethink the way I handle files. No wait. Unless Apple rethinks the way OS X handles files. For instance, both iPhoto and iTunes expect to fill up Macintosh HD with data. If you turn off copying photos to your iPhoto library, the iPhoto based screensavers don't work any more. I haven't tried iTunes with files on the network or even on a removable drive but its something I have to face soon with only 20 gig free. Of course copying a 60+ gig iPhoto library or iTunes library is a task that begs for firewire not usb.