128 GB or 258 GB?

[MacModMachine]

Yes, of course nicer things are nicer.

I've seen a lot of posts from a lot of people on these forums that come down to, "if you can afford it, why NOT buy [the product or upgrade in question]?!"

I find this sort of advice depressing because I know people who do spend whatever money they currently have on whatever thing they're currently buying, be it a car, house, laptop, etc. They end up with nice things but they save very little money and are often stressed out about their finances and are miserable.

I think if more people made purchasing decisions according to their needs vs. what they can afford, they'd lead happier lives.

Like I said before, there are definitely legitimate reasons why one might NEED more than 128GB of internal storage, but I imagine the vast majority of people don't. It's very easy to get a small external drive with huge storage capacity and use it to store infrequently-used files.

I suspect a lot of cases of people posting to this thread saying they need at least 500GB (or whatever huge amount) of storage are really cases of people not being aware of what's taking up space on their drive--I bet that if they ran a utility like Disk Inventory X, they would find that a lot of space was being taken up by files they don't need, don't want, didn't realize they still had, etc. etc.

bang on ,

people consume so much these days its insane and by consume i mean spend and WASTE money literally.

i used to have 480gb (old mac in specs) , i than looked at what i REALLY needed and i have 70gb free on a 128 flash drive. I also have the microsd 64gb flush mount reader in my air to give me more space for docs and pics should i need it on the go and not have to clutter my main drive.

ram is another big one , 4gb of ram is plenty of ram for almost anyone i run photoshop , virtual machines all on 4gb and do not have any issues with slowness.

all opinions of course ,

 

[talmy]

bang on ,
people consume so much these days its insane and by consume i mean spend and WASTE money literally.

Some people buy for the "bragging rights" but there can be legitimate reasons, of course. The computer should be bought based on the applications to be run. If you underestimate because you didn't "future proof" you can always buy a new computer (which will generally be more powerful anyway) and sell the old. As a bonus, the base models hold their values better.

At least the OP stated his usage. One needs a crystal ball when someone asks what to buy when they don't state what they are using it for!

As an example for buying for the applications, I mentioned earlier here that we've got a 64GB SSD, 2GB RAM 11" MBA that works just fine running the sort of apps mentioned by the OP. On the other hand, I've got a 15" cMBP with 1TB hybrid drive, 8GB RAM, and the quad-core i7 processor. I use it to process 5 hours of raw video weekly (FCPX and Compressor) and it spends 2-3 hours a week connected to a projector demonstrating computer aided design programs running in a Windows virtual machine, Keynote, and while recording it all using iShowU HD. FCPX runs in the background part of the time transcoding. I really need all the drive space, RAM and processor for that, but in a year I'll be retiring and selling the cMBP for something lighter and more modest!

 

[Amplelink]

Get the 256. No question about it unless this is a secondary machine. 128 is totally insufficient in these times when people take photos and videos all the time. Get more space and you won't regret it.

 

[snorkelman]

From what I can see a 128GB SSD more than fits the OPs stated requirements and then some.

The MacPro I have sat here is currently using 90GB of its boot SSD, and even that has over 40GB of stuff on it that the OP has expressed no interest in (eg multiple virtual machines, Xcode etc).

Sure some folks take loads of photos and videos these days But the OP has been pretty specific in his requirements and usage patterns and those don't factor into it.

Even if they did, other than budding amateurs and professionals there's little need to be lugging around weeks months and years of them on an internal drive. In those sort of 'endless digital hoarding' scenarios the user usually needs a better strategy not a bigger drive.

 

[motrek]

Get the 256. No question about it unless this is a secondary machine. 128 is totally insufficient in these times when people take photos and videos all the time. Get more space and you won't regret it.

I definitely agree with snorkelman, photos and videos are the easiest things in the world to offload to an external drive.

Surely you don't need to carry around EVERY SINGLE PHOTO AND VIDEO THAT YOU'VE EVER TAKEN and have instant access to it, right?

I mean, maybe if you're a professional photographer shooting RAW at, say, multiple weddings or something. Or you're shooting a movie. But then you probably already know you're going to need something other than a 128GB SSD.

And it's not like 128GB is a trivial amount of space. It looks like photos from my iPhone 5S average 2.1MB. Let's say you devote "only" 20GB of your drive to photos ... that's still almost TEN THOUSAND PHOTOS.

 

[Delmar]

I have a late 2010 with the 256gb ssd & it's plenty. I barely use half most of the time since all my media & photos are stored on a external drive attached to a Mac Mini. BUT, I am glad I have the larger SSD since I will load up a lot of movies & tv shows when I go on a trip. That's when it's nice to have the larger SSD.

 

[playtech1]

I'd go for the 256 - resale value better and a hedge against your usage increasing. The price difference isn't so much that it's worth taking the risk imho. For me, one of the reasons I upgraded to a 2013 with 512gb was because I got sick of having to clear out the junk so frequently on a 2011 with 256. I think those who say go with 128 must not keep many photos or videos on their machine. With pixel counts getting ever higher on cameras and phones even photos can eat a significant amount of space these days.

 

[Tony78228]

I'd like to thank everyone for their responses. I went ahead and chose 256GB just to be on the safe side. I can't wait to use it