2010 air still good for everyday use?

[technopimp]

I use a 2010 4/128 every day. No major issues. It's a little slow coming out of sleep sometimes, but for what I use it for it's perfectly fine.

 

[zxspectrum]

I have been using my 2010 13" air for the last couple of years no problem.
Mine has 4gb of ram and the only reason I am thinking of swapping is I need more space.

But I get a genuine days worth of use out it when browsing etc.

I use ableton live on mine and it runs fine, so garage band will be a breeze.

I am just trying to decide if I really want to sell this for £500 and spend £1250 on a 256gb 2012 Air.

There was someone on ebay selling 256gb ssd blades for £189, should have grabbed one of those and then sold this blade for £99, would have been a cheap upgrade, but I left it and now they are all gone.

What CPU does it have?

 

[gizze]

What CPU does it have?

1.86 core 2 duo.

That is also some of the problem, go up to an i5 and you take a hit on battery.
As long as it does what I want it to do battery is the most important thing for me.

I use ableton live 8 and it works perfectly, I use Serato Itch with an Allen & Heath X: One controller and again never had a single issue.
I have DJ'd for 3 hours on the battery when I forgot my ac adapter, and still had loads of battery left.

After 18 months or so of owning this I still get 5-8 hours from this thing. I see people with 2012 models moaning that they are only getting 3-4 hours.


I went from a 15" Pro with the core duo and this felt far faster, 18 months later I am not doing anything different with it so there is no reason for me to feel it is lacking in any area.
If I upgrade to ableton 9 and then it feels sluggish or I get issues then maybe I will upgrade, but it would be fine. If I used an i7 for a few weeks and then came back I might just find it slower, but doubt it.

I can get a 2012 13" with 128gig HD new for £845 as my daughter is at Uni, so £345 to swap should be a no brainer, but even still I am not sure it is worth it.

I was waiting for the Retina 13", but with 256gb it is £1699 and that is just not worth it.


So to sum up, this does every thing I want and well, I may get £500 for it, but it is worth far more to me than £500.

 

[quickbrownfox]

I have a 2010 2GB/64GB 1.4 11" base model and, much to my surprise, find that it is still perfectly snappy with ML. I wouldn't want to use it as my only Mac (the 64GB SSD is the biggest limitation) but for travel/portable use (mainly web and email) it is absolutely fine.

 

[cedwhatev]

I love my MBA 2010 and think it's silly to ask this question of whether it's still useful today. It just came out two years ago! But I will admit, I'm going to sell mine, and get the new 2012 11" 8/256, as personally, I want this machine to last me five years. The way technology advances these days, I am going to prepare myself...

.... plus, my buddy is going to buy mine for 750 bones. 🙄

 

[jmazzamj]

My sister's 2010 Air does choke with ML but that's because it only has 2GB RAM.

I'm looking forward to sell hers (I did have a buyer in July but whe wouldn't sell it) and give her my 2011 just because of the RAM, apart from which it runs fine. She's still using Safari which we all know is a memory hog (I also run Safari but with 4 GB is OK).

Cheers

 

[katewes]

I bought a 2012 MacBook Air.

When I was considering a new or 2nd hand, I refused to consider a 2010 model which had the Core 2 Duo's.

You can see from these benchmarks that the 2011 MBA's marked a huge jump in performance.

http://www.everymac.com/mac-benchmarks/index-mac-benchmarks.html

I previously had the 2nd generation MBA, and am loving the speed of the 2012 models. The 2011 models weren't far behind.

For my situation, I chose the 2012 models for the 8GB RAM capacity since I use a lot of VMWare running Windows for work, and 8GB was better for that purpose, but if I was running just Mac software without Windows, I'd be happy with a 2nd hand 2011 model.

Have you checked the refurbished prices on the Apple UK site to see if any 2011 models fit your budget?