It was only a matter of time before this happened. It is amazing news, but now I fear for my wallet's life. The 11" MBA sounds even more tempting now. Someone save me.
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256GB SSD Upgrades for New MacBook Air Announced
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The difference between the 1.4GHz C2D and the 1.6GHz C2D is so insignificant that you'd probably never notice. Too bad you can't throw this SSD in a MBA http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227552
Downside:
Those of us who wanted the 2.13GHz CPU are locked in to purchasing the 256GB SSD. While I love the speediness of my Intel SSDs on my other installs and like what Sandforce is doing to push Intel, it's a lot less motivating to me when I already have 256GB onboard than if we were able to order 2.13GHz & only 64GB.
True.Downside:
Those of us who wanted the 2.13GHz CPU are locked in to purchasing the 256GB SSD. While I love the speediness of my Intel SSDs on my other installs and like what Sandforce is doing to push Intel, it's a lot less motivating to me when I already have 256GB onboard than if we were able to order 2.13GHz & only 64GB.
But that 64GB SSD in the 11" MBA is going to be really space constrained.
At least the 256GB SSD has enough room for what most people need from a small laptop. And I'm sure large capacities will be available later, so maybe you can swap out that 256GB for a 512GB (or larger) at some point in the future, when the prices fall.
Downside:
Those of us who wanted the 2.13GHz CPU are locked in to purchasing the 256GB SSD. While I love the speediness of my Intel SSDs on my other installs and like what Sandforce is doing to push Intel, it's a lot less motivating to me when I already have 256GB onboard than if we were able to order 2.13GHz & only 64GB.
True. Apple is definitely playing the "upsell" game with this one, requiring the larger storage option to get either the 1.6GHz on the 11" or the 2.13GHz on the 13". That said, there likely isn't much difference between the 2.13GHz and 1.86GHz, so base 13" buyers may well be interested.
11" - 1,6Ghz - 4Gb - 128/256 Sandforce don't sound halfbad. Maybe it won't cost 200 euros like it does from Apple.
Excellent news and I hope they get the product finished and distribute in Europe!
Excellent news and I hope they get the product finished and distribute in Europe!
Agreed. But knowing now that this option to upgrade is coming out makes me really wish ordering 2.13 & 64GB was an option.
But I know me. Depending on prices I'm sure at some point I'll at least entertain the idea of making the switch anyway.
This is good news, I think. Not just the third party offering, but how Apple designed the SSD. I think a new standard for SSD storage needs to be designed, something not based off of SATA. An ultra-fast card designed to be plugged into the motherboard would be VERY neat, and could reduce computer sizes further for anything not needing a ginormous GPU. Actually, with the right design even computers with a large GPU could be made much smaller (and faster!) with such an advancement. I can see it now. Multi-TB SSDs in RAID 0, just plugged right into the motherboard. Goodbye spinning beach ball!!!
Ok. My opinion of the new MBA has just had a shift. Being able to upgrade your MBA to this *after buying it* is a major step in making the new MBA awesome. Though 128 would do it for me, 256 is more than adequate. It's actually a great sweetspot, as long as this machine can actually run some of the bigger content creation utilties well enough.
Ohh that would be so sweet!!! Although Apple care would most likely be void in that case.
It doesn't really matter, given the fastest you can transfer data to or from a MBA is limited by its ~30MB/sec USB ports.
well it's nice to know that something like this is available if i ever do get an 11" macbook air. i wonder how hard it would be to install
It matters if what you care about is the speed between the mobo and the internal SSD...
At which point you're almost certainly going to be doing something that's CPU-bound anyway.
The problem is that the screws on the bottom of the MBA case are non-standard. Not an insurmountable problem, but still a PITA. Once you get past those, it's smooth sailing.
And, no, Apple is not the only company to have ever used those. But I do wish they'd stop already.
Sorry guys
I decided to "push" the issue along, asking a prominent and trustworthy mac upgrade company who most of you probably know of if they had investigated this thing, and they said they had found something very fishy with the company and its claims and said they would not be involved with them and their products
I decided to "push" the issue along, asking a prominent and trustworthy mac upgrade company who most of you probably know of if they had investigated this thing, and they said they had found something very fishy with the company and its claims and said they would not be involved with them and their products