128 or 256 SSD? Pro or Air?

[jparker402]

Still in my quandary as to what to get! Past up a good deal at Best Buy only to find another good deal from Nebraska Furniture Mart! My quandary is two-fold.

First, I suspect my needs for a drive are small. Sales people from Apple Store, Best Buy and others think I would be fine with a 128. However, I keep reading here that a 256 is recommended. I do want to get a external hard drive as a back up and do plan to archive in the cloud. Just wonder how much that could reduce my need for the bigger drive.

Second, if I opt for a MacBook Air with 8/256 I find I am only $100 away from a MacBook Pro (w/retina) 8/128. I do believe I would be content without the retina, but it is tempting!

Would appreciate people's opinions! Thanks!

Edit: forgot to mention that the deals only last through this coming Sunday, so time is short.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Non retina is fine of course, but I'll be honest screen is the most important criteria for me in a laptop as that is what you interact with, the retina is far nicer on the eyes and especially with text on smaller screen sizes.

Only you know how much hard drive space you need, if you are using 60-70gb now then you should be fine with 128gb if more than 100gb probably not.

However if you plan to use it for editing 4K movies or large raw files you will want as much space as you can afford, you give no idea as to your usage and what sort of apps you want to run so advising is difficult.

 

[maflynn]

128GB is ok, if you plan no not having much data on the computer. I recently tried splitting up my 2TB Fusion drive (which has a 128GB SSD), and I could not easily achieve this. While my needs are different then yours, 128GB in this day and age is extremely meager. I'd opt for the 256GB

I'm not surprised that apple salesmen stated its fine, because they have to tow the company line on such things.

 

[Tech198]

Still in my quandary as to what to get! Past up a good deal at Best Buy only to find another good deal from Nebraska Furniture Mart! My quandary is two-fold.

First, I suspect my needs for a drive are small. Sales people from Apple Store, Best Buy and others think I would be fine with a 128. However, I keep reading here that a 256 is recommended. I do want to get a external hard drive as a back up and do plan to archive in the cloud. Just wonder how much that could reduce my need for the bigger drive.

Second, if I opt for a MacBook Air with 8/256 I find I am only $100 away from a MacBook Pro (w/retina) 8/128. I do believe I would be content without the retina, but it is tempting!

Would appreciate people's opinions! Thanks!

Edit: forgot to mention that the deals only last through this coming Sunday, so time is short.

Retina is always tempting, which is why i got one over the MBA.

I guess most stuff could be stored in the cloud as a local storage saving, but then again, the more space, the better ...... cloud is good for syncing between devices, or for storage offsite anyway if u get an iPad stolen for instance.

Not sure if Apple gives you the ability to remotely log out of icloud or something from a lost device r remove access to keep data safe in the cloud, but they should do that.

Apple gives u 14-day return anyway.

 

[LorenK]

What do you use your computer for? Even if you only keep apps on the SSD, 128 seems small. I have 256 and I've had to clean stuff out at times, because of app updates. Bigger is safer because even MacOS is showing signs of bloat.

 

[jparker402]

My current computer is an HP Pavilion with 4 mg ram and a 600 mg hard drive. I use it for internet surfing, storing favorites (for easy recall), email, photo storage (along with iCloud and OneDrive), a couple spreadsheets on Excel, and storage of correspondence/notes/lists. It is a Windows 7. If I am reading the data correctly, my hard drive has roughly 107 used out of the 600. I admit to not knowing how to manage the disk or optimize it, not that I think I need to optimize it for anything.

 

[kohlson]

My in-laws and my younger daughter have 13-in 8GB MBAs with 128GB. In bot cases the drives are not even 1/2 full. My wife, mine, and our older daughter have trouble staying under 500GB. My point is, it's very possible to stay under 128GB. You say you're at hardly a GB now, so 128 of them should be OK! Note that you can get SSD upgrades later from OWC. Hard for me to say on the retina. My work system is retina, and it's nice. But on occasion I use my wife and daughter's for short periods and it seems fine.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

My current computer is an HP Pavilion with 4 mg ram and a 600 mg hard drive. I use it for internet surfing, storing favorites (for easy recall), email, photo storage (along with iCloud and OneDrive), a couple spreadsheets on Excel, and storage of correspondence/notes/lists. It is a Windows 7. If I am reading the data correctly, my hard drive has roughly 107 used out of the 600. I admit to not knowing how to manage the disk or optimize it, not that I think I need to optimize it for anything.

Well if you want to keep all that on there and more over time you will struggle with 128gb,

 

[jparker402]

Thanks for the info! Guess it is time I decide!

 

[CrystalQuest76]

Get the larger drive. Operating Systems are getting larger and multi-media files are getting fatter. In addition if you do any production work, having a larger drive will allow you to have a bigger scratch-disk which is important if you don't have lots of ram. Getting a larger drive now will mean that the computer will not need upgrading or replacing as soon.

 

[jparker402]

Finally did it! Today I bought a Mac Air 8/256! Will get it out of its box tonight and see how to turn it on.
[doublepost=1469836967][/doublepost]

Finally did it! Today I bought a Mac Air 8/256! Will get it out of its box tonight and see how to turn it on.

And thanks for all the replies!

 

[Mal67]

I'm late to this one but for the first time ever I ran out of room effectively on my 128 ssd and I didn't think that all that much was on there. Glad you went for the 256.

 

[maflynn]

Finally did it! Today I bought a Mac Air 8/256! Will get it out of its box tonight and see how to turn it on.

Congrats, and good luck with your new baby - update this thread after you use the MBA and let us know what you think