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Replacing a non-retina MacBook for a MBA

Medic311

Medic311

macrumors 68000
Jul 30, 2011
1,659
58
JHUFrank said:
Absolutely love my old MBA. The only area where 4gigs of RAM was an issue was with VMs. But if you aren't going to run VMs, go for it. Its an awesome machine.
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^ this

i have a 2014 MBA 13" with 4GB DDR3 and it is VERY snappy. i haven't had any memory issues on it at all. also the intent of the MBA wasn't to be a power house...it's primary intent is to provide a full computing experience in the slimmest lightest package possible. it does that perfectly with 4GB. 8GB is offered for those who really want to push their MBA to the max in terms of multi-tasking or again for those whose needs fall outside of the typical customer (VM etc).

if i was investing in a full blown Macbook Pro Retina as my primary machine and as my primary workhouse...heck i'd get 16GB of DDR3.
 
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Brian Y

macrumors 68040
Oct 21, 2012
3,776
1,064
joshlalonde said:
Firstly, I said close the apps he *doesn't need*. Perhaps you missed that?

Also, I thought it was understood that a Retina MacBook isn't up for grabs here? The screen on the older MacBook has a lower resolution than the Air... So that's not an issue either. I recommended getting another screen if he needed something slightly better or for more workspace.
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Don't resort to attacking me.

And I didn't mention resolution. The MBA screen is a higher resolution, with MUCH poorer colour reproduction. There is much more to screen quality than pixel count.

I did read the op's post, but ironically you don't seem to have read mine before you jumped into insults. Lose the self-righteousness and we might be able to discuss it properly.
 
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Saturn1217

macrumors 65816
Apr 28, 2008
1,273
848
If your question is will the faster PCI-e SSDs make running out of ram less painful then the answer is NO.

I have a 2013 MBA with 8gb of ram. It is a great machine (best computer I've had thus far). I wouldn't consider myself a "Pro" user but I do need to do a LOT of multitasking and I recently had to work with some very large word documents that sucked the RAM out of my machine (probably because Word is a steaming pile of poo but it was required for this work). Running out of Ram in that scenario was EXACTLY as painful and stuttery and not fun as one might expect. The faster SSD storage did not help. So if you know (based on previous experience) that 4gb wouldn't cut it before do NOT expect 4gb to cut it now just because you are using a MBA. Stick with your Pro until you have the money to buy a version with 8gb of RAM.
 
Meister

Meister

Suspended
Oct 10, 2013
5,456
4,310
Saturn1217 said:
If your question is will the faster PCI-e SSDs make running out of ram less painful then the answer is NO.

I have a 2013 MBA with 8gb of ram. It is a great machine (best computer I've had thus far). I wouldn't consider myself a "Pro" user but I do need to do a LOT of multitasking and I recently had to work with some very large word documents that sucked the RAM out of my machine (probably because Word is a steaming pile of poo but it was required for this work). Running out of Ram in that scenario was EXACTLY as painful and stuttery and not fun as one might expect. The faster SSD storage did not help. So if you know (based on previous experience) that 4gb wouldn't cut it before do NOT expect 4gb to cut it now just because you are using a MBA. Stick with your Pro until you have the money to buy a version with 8gb of RAM.
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I do not believe what you are writing here.

Please post a screen shot of memory pressure when you run out of 8gb ! ram working with "large word documents".
 
T

thearmand

macrumors newbie
May 19, 2014
7
0
Meister said:
I do not believe what you are writing here.

Please post a screen shot of memory pressure when you run out of 8gb ! ram working with "large word documents".
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Amen to this. Didn't think it was possible for Word (regardless of document sizes) to eat up RAM like that, especially with all 8GB of it paired with a modern SSD.
 
M

MarvinHC

macrumors 6502a
Jan 9, 2014
834
293
Belgium
thearmand said:
Amen to this. Didn't think it was possible for Word (regardless of document sizes) to eat up RAM like that, especially with all 8GB of it paired with a modern SSD.
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Well if he happens to work with some of my former marketing colleagues it is possible. I have received more than one powerpoint presentation which was only a couple of pages but hundreds of megabyte big - thanks to putting extremely high rise pictures inside :roll eyes:

Same with word, if you copy/paste pictures straight out of your 36MP DSLR it is possible to overload your memory. But this is not exactly professional working in my book.

Coming back to the original question: I have an 2013 Air with 4GB RAM and have yet to get the memory pressure in the red, despite 50+ tabs in various browsers open, some work in lightroom etc.

The only time I was struggling was when using iMovie but from what I read online this had more to do with the poor software than my hardware.
 
Beachguy

Beachguy

macrumors 65816
Nov 23, 2011
1,008
407
Florida, USA
My MBA is older- a 2011 I5 with 4 gigs and a 128 gig SSD.

One thing I discovered is that with the SSD, even one that old, because it handles virtual RAM so much more efficiently. it feels like a machine with more RAM than it really has.

I would suggest trying the MBA a bit and see how it feels. That said, I think the MBP is a better machine, but your needs may be a bit different. I have both, and find them to have complementary rather than competing strengths.
 
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Rodrigo Yoshida

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 26, 2013
50
5
Brazil
Just got the MBA! I will still do a clean install to make sure everything is ok with the OS, but as far as I could see the MBA is much snappier than my MBP even with the upgrades I did, it definitely does not feel like a 4gb ram notebook, let's see how it's going to be with some real work.
 
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Rodrigo Yoshida

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 26, 2013
50
5
Brazil
Just finished a clean OS X install and restored everything from my Time Machine, so finally I was able to do a real life test. Actually I am usually really careful about using my computer, I do not leave any apps opened that I am not using, but this time I left many apps opened on purpose just to see how the MBA handles the memory.

I opened about 2 Chrome windows with about 10 tabs each, all with different websites, Skype, Thunderbird, Spotify, Photoshop with 13 files opened, MAMP, Coda with about 5 files opened. I also did some normal work with Photoshop, browsed the web and listened to some music on Spotify. After that the memory pressure went yellow. Even though that is a bad sign I did not feel any considerably slow down. I started noticing a little lag, I guess it is because of the swap, but still barely noticeable. Here is a screen shot of the system monitor:

LzZxVOj.png


I will not be using my MBA that way normally, so I think I am going to be ok with my new Mac.
 
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Rodrigo Yoshida

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 26, 2013
50
5
Brazil
I installed the latest Mavericks version through system recovery. I think maybe it has to do with the fact I restored from my Time Machine backup, só it must have copied everything from my old mac, including the settings.
 
Meister

Meister

Suspended
Oct 10, 2013
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Rodrigo Yoshida said:
Just finished a clean OS X install and restored everything from my Time Machine, so finally I was able to do a real life test. Actually I am usually really careful about using my computer, I do not leave any apps opened that I am not using, but this time I left many apps opened on purpose just to see how the MBA handles the memory.

I opened about 2 Chrome windows with about 10 tabs each, all with different websites, Skype, Thunderbird, Spotify, Photoshop with 13 files opened, MAMP, Coda with about 5 files opened. I also did some normal work with Photoshop, browsed the web and listened to some music on Spotify. After that the memory pressure went yellow. Even though that is a bad sign I did not feel any considerably slow down. I started noticing a little lag, I guess it is because of the swap, but still barely noticeable. Here is a screen shot of the system monitor:

Image

I will not be using my MBA that way normally, so I think I am going to be ok with my new Mac.
Click to expand...
Very informative post! That is somewhat advanced multitasking in my book.
Chrome is a Memory hag. Try not using chrome and see what happens. ;)

You should take another screenshot with safari instead and add your experience to the ram wiki thread. I think this will give a accurate depiction of the maximum workload you can put on a 4gb MBA.
 
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Rodrigo Yoshida

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 26, 2013
50
5
Brazil
Meister said:
Very informative post! That is somewhat advanced multitasking in my book.
Chrome is a Memory hag. Try not using chrome and see what happens. ;)

You should take another screenshot with safari instead and add your experience to the ram wiki thread. I think this will give a accurate depiction of the maximum workload you can put on a 4gb MBA.
Click to expand...

I did not know Safari was lighter than Chrome, since I have a Nexus and a Chromecast I never considered using Safari as my main browser. After reading your tip I closed Chrome to see what happens and it released 1gb of memory after that! I never imagined Chrome was so heavy on Macs.
 
Meister

Meister

Suspended
Oct 10, 2013
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Rodrigo Yoshida said:
I did not know Safari was lighter than Chrome, since I have a Nexus and a Chromecast I never considered using Safari as my main browser. After reading your tip I closed Chrome to see what happens and it released 1gb of memory after that! I never imagined Chrome was so heavy on Macs.
Click to expand...
chrome can also overheat your cpu. It's simply not optimized for macs.
post your memory screenshot. It's good as a reference for others.
 
R

Rodrigo Yoshida

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 26, 2013
50
5
Brazil
Meister said:
chrome can also overheat your cpu. It's simply not optimized for macs.
post your memory screenshot. It's good as a reference for others.
Click to expand...

Following your tip I did the exactly same test as before, same apps, files and websites opened, except about Safari instead of using Chrome, actually I think this time I opened a little more files/websites. Like you said, the memory pressure was still green and I noticed a decrease of 1gb on the Virtual Memory. The swap was a little smaller as well.

One really interesting thing I noticed was with all those apps opened at the same time, when I switch between them I feel a very little lag, but just once, after that I can use that app normally without any slow down. I think it is the OS decompressing that app from the memory.

Here is another screenshot of Activity Monitor:

vyh8Gtx.png
 
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