Semi-Maxed out MBA or MBP--Please help!

[ryguy0587]

Hey fellas, I need to buy a mac book asap before I move out of the country and am having trouble deciding between a 13" semi-maxed out (256gb, 8gb ram, i7) MBA or a 13" MBP (i5 or i7) and ill upgrade to 8gb and 256SSD myself (since apple up charges a lot for this).

--I am a start-up entrepreneur will use it for blogging, word processors, spread sheets, presentations, small video editing, running multiple apps at once, web browsing, watching video--that sort of stuff. I do not do much with photoshop or coding or gaming. I have only used an air in store but have been using my girlfriends pro for a while now (4gb, i5, 360gb hdd, 2011 model) and have no issues with weight or anything.

--If I go with the MBP is it worth getting the i7 over the i5? or will I not really notice a difference?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

[designs216]

As I said, I think the weight of the MBP is going to make it cumbersome in all the traveling that you'll do. My route would be to get the Air and bump the specs up a bit to give it longevity and flexibility but not enough to put it on par with the expense of a MBP, ie 8GB RAM / 256GB SSD. Consider also a good display so when you're in the office you can conveniently have 2 docs open side-by-side.

[Mr Lightning]

Originally Posted by ryguy0587

Hey fellas, I need to buy a mac book asap before I move out of the country and am having trouble deciding between a 13" semi-maxed out (256gb, 8gb ram, i7) MBA or a 13" MBP (i5 or i7) and ill upgrade to 8gb and 256SSD myself (since apple up charges a lot for this).

--I am a start-up entrepreneur will use it for blogging, word processors, spread sheets, presentations, small video editing, running multiple apps at once, web browsing, watching video--that sort of stuff. I do not do much with photoshop or coding or gaming. I have only used an air in store but have been using my girlfriends pro for a while now (4gb, i5, 360gb hdd, 2011 model) and have no issues with weight or anything.

--If I go with the MBP is it worth getting the i7 over the i5? or will I not really notice a difference?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

Based upon your general usage I would almost always suggest the MBP especially at that price points. Is it worth getting an i7 over an i5 is hard to judge, it may be beneficial for long-term longevity to get the i7. However if you're going down that road you may see more performance gains from buying a 16GB RAM kit from another vendor.

Edit: Only reason I would suggest going for the Air would be if you were going for extreme portability and weight was an important deciding factor.
Hope this helps.