Buying MacBook Air tomorrow, need advice.

[Mjmar]

After wanting the 2011 MacBook Air 13" since it came out in the summer, I have finally caved, and I'm glad I waited since retailers are offering very nice discounts on the machines since they have been out for awhile. Now before I buy, I'd like your input on two things.

1) Where is the best place to buy it? I live in the US, and I was thinking Amazon since there's no tax, but then I saw that Best Buy offers student discounts and there's a sale on top of that. Where did you buy and how much did you pay?

2) Storage. For those of you with 128GB ssd drives, have you struggled to stay under the limit? Is the 256GB worth $300 more? I do have more than 256GB of content on my MacBook now, so none of the drives will be enough. But since I will not have enough storage I'm going to need to use an external drive regardless, so I was thinking I should just get the 128. Not sure though.

Thanks everyone.

[iKIKO]

i think should get the 128 one and get an external hdd with the 300 left

[adamtj11]

Originally Posted by Mjmar

After wanting the 2011 MacBook Air 13" since it came out in the summer, I have finally caved, and I'm glad I waited since retailers are offering very nice discounts on the machines since they have been out for awhile. Now before I buy, I'd like your input on two things.

1) Where is the best place to buy it? I live in the US, and I was thinking Amazon since there's no tax, but then I saw that Best Buy offers student discounts and there's a sale on top of that. Where did you buy and how much did you pay?

2) Storage. For those of you with 128GB ssd drives, have you struggled to stay under the limit? Is the 256GB worth $300 more? I do have more than 256GB of content on my MacBook now, so none of the drives will be enough. But since I will not have enough storage I'm going to need to use an external drive regardless, so I was thinking I should just get the 128. Not sure though.

Thanks everyone.

I have the 128gb model and invested in iTunes Match to have all my music in the cloud so I could stream when I needed it, that took away any need for more space for me. I have a small bootcamp partition and still have 60GB free on my Mac OS X partition(which I use 99% of the time) and that includes my photos(videos are kept on external drive). I myself couldn't warrant the huge price tag for 256gb.

[Parkbruce]

mac mall also do not have tax and they also offer student discounts...right now there really isnt a good student discount at apple so there really isnt a point getting it at the apple store.. for storage i personally own the 256gb air 1.7 i5 ..i chose the i5 over i7 because performance difference is very minor and the i7 is much lounder in terms of fan and is hotter...i say go with 256 because you cant upgrade the hard drive on the mba and 256 is nice to have just in case..then again for 300 bucks you could get like 3 external hard drive..i personally use about 180gb of storage and have a seperate 250gb external for movies..but i never use my external..its mostly for storing old movies

[Frankied22]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Get the refurbished model on Apples website. The 13" 4gb 128 SSD is $1,099. That is the cheapest you'll find one. Plus Apples refurbs are practically brand new.

[Geekbabe]

Originally Posted by Frankied22

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Get the refurbished model on Apples website. The 13" 4gb 128 SSD is $1,099. That is the cheapest you'll find one. Plus Apples refurbs are practically brand new.

Quoted for truth!

I got my refurbed 13" 4gb 128 SSD Air for $1,099 at the end of Nov, the computer arrived looking brand new, it has the samsung screen & ssd, it's been pure bliss to use so far.

[shadowjeff]

Do I struggle to maintain space on the 128 gb? Yes. I would say if you have the money, go for the 256 gb or just get a cheaper external 1-2 tb hard drive.

[outz]

Originally Posted by Frankied22

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Get the refurbished model on Apples website. The 13" 4gb 128 SSD is $1,099. That is the cheapest you'll find one. Plus Apples refurbs are practically brand new.

yeah, id just do this... grab a 32GB SD card from amazon for dirt cheap and use it to store general bs to save space on the 128GB ssd

[macguy360]

Best buy will not combine student discount with their sale price. I know because I bought my 13" macbook air yesterday and tried to do that at 2 different best buys. Both times the store managers told me that they would lose money if they were to give me a student discount on the sale item. The lowest they will go is whichever is lower, the student discount from full price or the already sale price.

I also tried to get a student price on an open box macbook air and they would not go for it either. In the end I settled for an open box 13" for $1079.

[Mjmar]

Originally Posted by macguy360

Best buy will not combine student discount with their sale price. I know because I bought my 13" macbook air yesterday and tried to do that at 2 different best buys. Both times the store managers told me that they would lose money if they were to give me a student discount on the sale item. The lowest they will go is whichever is lower, the student discount from full price or the already sale price.

I also tried to get a student price on an open box macbook air and they would not go for it either. In the end I settled for an open box 13" for $1079.

Thanks for the info. Do you remember how much the student discount was?

[Pharmscott]

With Office 2011 and all the music that I actually listen to on my MBA, I have used on 28gb of my 128. The rest of the data can live on and external drive. Or, get a Lynksys router with usb NAS and you're all set!

[macguy360]

Originally Posted by Mjmar

Thanks for the info. Do you remember how much the student discount was?

I went online to check the student prices. They were as follows

11" and 13" airs any model. $100 off.

13" pros any model $100 off.

15" base pro $100 off. 15" premium pro $200 off.

17" pro $200 off.

[GKDAIR]

1) I would just buy from apple. You can buy it from other places sure, and if you get a significant discount feel free, but I have peace of mind shopping at apple. I'm paying 1.5k for a computer I don't want a refurb one, lol.

2) In the 5 months that I have owned a macbook air I still have 76 gigs left. And steam with TF2 is taking up 20 gigs of that. So really I haven't used 96 gigs. And thats with music, college papers, and apps crowding up my computer.

[aeboi]

Unless Best Buy is cheaper (after tax), I'd just get it from Amazon.

[alphaod]

For day to day use, I think the mid-range model is a good choice; don't get the base model with only 2GB of RAM.

128GB should be sufficient for most uses again, as long as you don't have a large media library you wish to store on the internal drive. If plan to allocate some space to Windows, 128GB is the bare minimum you should get. That said should you wish and have the budget for it, you can purchase the much faster OWC Aura 6G should 128GB be insufficient in the future.

Finally for purchasing needs, many of my friends recommend Mac Mall as they usually have good prices; personally I shop direct from Apple if I'm buying it at a store, otherwise I buy from B&H.

[stockcerts]

I was thinking about getting mine at Apple this weekend, but when you factor in the discount from MacMall and Amazon and no tax, that's over $100-less than the AppleStore price. I've never made a purchase from Amazaon that didn't didn't stand behind.

[roofz]

Does anyone know if apple refurbished macs get taxed?

Seems stupid to tax the same item twice..

[cclark6000]

Depends on where you live, but if Apple has a store where you live, you can count on paying tax. I should know, as I just bought a refurb 13-inch MBA Sandy Bridge yesterday. Even then, you're still going to do better than BB.

[kylebshr]

Originally Posted by roofz

Does anyone know if apple refurbished macs get taxed?

Seems stupid to tax the same item twice..

except that the tax is refunded when you return something...