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13" Air v 13" Pro

S

szolr

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 27, 2011
376
0
London, UK
OK, so I went through the whole 'what laptop?' decision when I became a student. It's been a year and I was just wondering theoretically(!) what laptop I'd get this year if faced with the choice. Now the 13 inch Air starts at £999 :)eek:) like the base end Pro I'd be more inclined to get the Air. What do you reckon would be the best choice for a student now between the 2? I use Photoshop frequently but not for academic stuff. Civilization 5 and Photoshop CS6 are probably my most demanding apps. (We'll ignore Office 2011 and the other menial items). :p
 
I'm going to have to go with air on this one as the resolution will suite you for your visual editing applications. If I'm not mistaken, the pro 13' has 1280 X 800 while the 13" air has 1440 by 900 which should give you more room to work with.


CIV V should run okay with respectable frame rates if you configure it right.
 
szolr said:
OK, so I went through the whole 'what laptop?' decision when I became a student. It's been a year and I was just wondering theoretically(!) what laptop I'd get this year if faced with the choice. Now the 13 inch Air starts at £999 :)eek:) like the base end Pro I'd be more inclined to get the Air. What do you reckon would be the best choice for a student now between the 2? I use Photoshop frequently but not for academic stuff. Civilization 5 and Photoshop CS6 are probably my most demanding apps. (We'll ignore Office 2011 and the other menial items). :p
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Please see the other threads on this topic. This has been endlessly discussed, and I would guess it would be difficult to convince one of the MBA people here to go from a lightweight model with an SSD and high resolution to a heavier one without an SSD and lower resolution. It's not a choice this year, in my opinion.
 
I had the same decision last year for my first year of medical school. I chose the Pro last year. This year the Air has overtaken the Pro in my opinion. I don't even think it's close which 13" MacBook to choose. With the Air bumping up to 512 GB SSDs and up to 8 GB of RAM. The lack of large storage space and amount of RAM were my gripes last year, but Apple has effectively solved those problems. I plan to pick up a Haswell Air next year before I start rotations.
 
I chose the Air. From everything I read, ill be happy with my decision. The Pro was just way too heavy and bulky. And for my simple needs, I think the Air will do. Theres tons of cheap disk drives on Amazon that will probably make me never regret not getting a Pro for that reason. And display is so much better.
 
szolr said:
OK, so I went through the whole 'what laptop?' decision when I became a student. It's been a year and I was just wondering theoretically(!) what laptop I'd get this year if faced with the choice. Now the 13 inch Air starts at £999 :)eek:) like the base end Pro I'd be more inclined to get the Air. What do you reckon would be the best choice for a student now between the 2? I use Photoshop frequently but not for academic stuff. Civilization 5 and Photoshop CS6 are probably my most demanding apps. (We'll ignore Office 2011 and the other menial items). :p
Click to expand...

I would recommend the 13'' Air. If you happen to run out of space, just stick an SD card into the SD card slot. Air can handle photoshop quite well.
 
I wrestled with the same decision in February and got the MBA. When I arrived at Best Buy I still hadn't made up my mind. They had the 13" MBA and MBP right next to each other, so I restarted them at the same time. When I saw how fast the MBA booted, I realized what a big plus the SSD would be and I was sold.

The MBA with 256GB SSD really came in at the right price point for me, about $70 more than the MBP with its slow hard drive. I decided I could live without the DVD drive and firewire.
 
13" Air + 8GB RAM ($1239 with student discount) + 1TB USB 3.0 external hard drive (~$100) would probably be my choice.
 
Stetrain said:
13" Air + 8GB RAM ($1239 with student discount) + 1TB USB 3.0 external hard drive (~$100) would probably be my choice.
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You just read my mind! That's exactly what I'm doing, but I'm getting a 32gb USB 3.0
 
I've switched to an air after turning my mid 09 13 mbp into a fathers day present. Initially I got another 13 pro but with the retina out I was OCDing all night on these forums, dissatisfied with my decision and trying to convince myself otherwise... Suddenly the form factor I loved for 3 years felt heavy as a brick and the screen was looking rather pixelated.

Typically I only use my computer for terminal (ssh), excel and a bit of safari so I have no usage case to justify needing retina, after much going back and forth I decided the air was for me mainly for the higher screen resoluton and slimmer / lighter form factor. (Well also I don't want to wait 3-4 weeks for delivery of the retina I would want, instant gratification type of guy...) I returned the pro and picked up an ultimate 13 at the apple store the other day along with a shell case and tb to Ethernet adapter, this is a great machine for me.
 
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