I'm sorry to start another personal 'help me decide' thread, but I am really stuck with this one.
I am going to buy my Wife a macbook air for her Birthday in two weeks. She is also starting university (nursing degree) at the same time, so is entitled to the HE discount. This means that for £945, I can buy her the latest base 13" with all the various improvements over the 2010 model (thunderbolt will be unnecessary)...
Also as it's a HE purchase new from apple, it has the following further advantages...
But then the 2010 base model is available a lot cheaper second hand but in nearly new condition. Basically, for £580, I would be buying the following...
...But I would be saving £365 and it comes with one considerable advantage...
Now normally it's a no-brainer - I would always jump on a possible HE discount for a brand new mac purchase, but the difference in price here is quite considerable. £580 vs £945 - that's a 63% increase and despite the many advantages, I still can't decide if it's worth the extra cost.
I also have a couple of questions which may make all the difference...
1) 2GB ram (that cannot be upgraded) in the 2010 model is nearly a deal-breaker. However, with an SSD available for virtual memory, I imagine that the 2GB limitation is nowhere near as noticeable as it would be with a slow laptop hard disk grinding on the overflow. Does anyone with 2GB + SSD notice much disadvantage?
2) When the 2011 macbook air first came out. Opinion on the intel graphics was that they are nearly as good as the 2010's nvidia GPU at best, but the GPU is new and there may be plenty of room for improvement with driver updates in the future. Two Months on, Has there been any improvement?
I need to make a quick decision and I am completely 50/50 on it at the moment. A £365 difference is definitely an important consideration to me (ok, if I wanted to I could spend a couple of hundred on a windows laptop, but... come on
). Even if I factor in the app store credit and the (not quite full) applecare, it's still at least a £200 saving - for a second hand computer yes, but is it really that much worse in specs? Especially for my Wife's likely usage of the machine.
Thanks for reading. Any opinions would be most welcome.
I am going to buy my Wife a macbook air for her Birthday in two weeks. She is also starting university (nursing degree) at the same time, so is entitled to the HE discount. This means that for £945, I can buy her the latest base 13" with all the various improvements over the 2010 model (thunderbolt will be unnecessary)...
- 4GB ram
- sandy bridge CPU
- backlit keyboard
Also as it's a HE purchase new from apple, it has the following further advantages...
- It's brand new
- comes with the free 3 year repair-only applecare.
- £65 mac store credit
But then the 2010 base model is available a lot cheaper second hand but in nearly new condition. Basically, for £580, I would be buying the following...
- "lightly used" condition
- 2GB ram
- core2duo
- no backlit keyboard
- no/little applecare
- no store credit
...But I would be saving £365 and it comes with one considerable advantage...
- better (nvidia) GPU!
Now normally it's a no-brainer - I would always jump on a possible HE discount for a brand new mac purchase, but the difference in price here is quite considerable. £580 vs £945 - that's a 63% increase and despite the many advantages, I still can't decide if it's worth the extra cost.
I also have a couple of questions which may make all the difference...
1) 2GB ram (that cannot be upgraded) in the 2010 model is nearly a deal-breaker. However, with an SSD available for virtual memory, I imagine that the 2GB limitation is nowhere near as noticeable as it would be with a slow laptop hard disk grinding on the overflow. Does anyone with 2GB + SSD notice much disadvantage?
2) When the 2011 macbook air first came out. Opinion on the intel graphics was that they are nearly as good as the 2010's nvidia GPU at best, but the GPU is new and there may be plenty of room for improvement with driver updates in the future. Two Months on, Has there been any improvement?
I need to make a quick decision and I am completely 50/50 on it at the moment. A £365 difference is definitely an important consideration to me (ok, if I wanted to I could spend a couple of hundred on a windows laptop, but... come on
Thanks for reading. Any opinions would be most welcome.