Hi everyone,
I have been using a refurbished 13" Macbook Pro since September 2010. It has 4 GB RAM, 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo chip and a 250GB drive. It's beginning to slow up (I mainly use it for pretty heavy Photoshop and Lightroom work) and is suffering from some battery and screen issues. Since I now have an iPad mini I plan to use the MBP only for major computing and content creation tasks.
So I am thinking to replace it with a 13" Macbook Air but was unsure whether the Air is sufficiently powerful or whether I should wait six months for refurbished Retina Macbook Pros to come on the market.
In a Macbook Air I would be looking for 8GB of RAM and an Intel i5 chip. I've seen that the i5 chip benchmarks significantly faster than the Core 2 duo chips, and I'm sure the 8GB of RAM is an improvement over the 4GB I currently have, but I wonder if this will translate to a real-world difference. A MBA would cost $1200 with my employer discount and customization. A 13" Macbook Pro Retina would cost $1600 (may be too much to spend given that in a few years Retina displays will cost much less).
Anyone use Macbook Airs for photographic work? What do you think? Decent replacement for an older 2010 Macbook Pro?
Thanks!
I have been using a refurbished 13" Macbook Pro since September 2010. It has 4 GB RAM, 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo chip and a 250GB drive. It's beginning to slow up (I mainly use it for pretty heavy Photoshop and Lightroom work) and is suffering from some battery and screen issues. Since I now have an iPad mini I plan to use the MBP only for major computing and content creation tasks.
So I am thinking to replace it with a 13" Macbook Air but was unsure whether the Air is sufficiently powerful or whether I should wait six months for refurbished Retina Macbook Pros to come on the market.
In a Macbook Air I would be looking for 8GB of RAM and an Intel i5 chip. I've seen that the i5 chip benchmarks significantly faster than the Core 2 duo chips, and I'm sure the 8GB of RAM is an improvement over the 4GB I currently have, but I wonder if this will translate to a real-world difference. A MBA would cost $1200 with my employer discount and customization. A 13" Macbook Pro Retina would cost $1600 (may be too much to spend given that in a few years Retina displays will cost much less).
Anyone use Macbook Airs for photographic work? What do you think? Decent replacement for an older 2010 Macbook Pro?
Thanks!
