Should I upgrade Mid 2010 MBA? Opinions

[WhoisMedina]

I'm a Network Engineering student at New England Tech and I have a mid 2010 13" MBA w/4GB of RAM & 128GB SSD. I feel like I should get a new 13" MBP because I'll be able to upgrade RAM & add another HDD. I'm realizing more and more that I need the storage space and I really don't want to carry around an external HDD. Running the amounts of VM's I have to is taking up too much space.

Another option I was thinking about was getting an external 120GB SSD instead of 500GB HDD, so I can run the VM's off of it and still keep the speed.

Any opinions are appreciated, thanks in advance.

 

[cluthz]

An external SSD will be faster than an external HDD, but you are still slowed down by the USB2 interface.

 

[Verix]

If you wish to maintain the portability of the air, the external SSD would probably suffice. Just make sure to buy one big enough so you won't be thinking the 120GB will be again too small in another 6 months. As is said, it will only max out the USB2 speeds but that should be good enough (it's only a pity you won't run the SSD at full speed this way).

If you have the money to upgrade to a new pc, the MBP with more RAM will be a little beefier in specs. You could also wait for Haswell if you want the %+ CPU/GPU boost. You could also replace the superdrive with a docking station to have both an SSD and HDD inside which could fit all your needs and more.

 

[2IS]

I want to maintain the portability of the air and I would like more storage as well as more ram and an overall faster machine... So i'm waiting it our for haswell equipped MBA's before upgrading. In the mean time, this 2010 has been a work horse and will suffice until then.

 

[WhoisMedina]

Thanks, I appreciate it. I'll hold off as long as I can for Haswell Macs then decide between MBA or MBP.