The thing is that I have an ultimate in order i7/8gb/512ssd. But by reading on this forum it looks like I'll take a big hit next year when I try to resell to upgrade to the new Air (I'll definitely do) as it will have a resell value similar to a base model.
Meanwhile, the base model will also take a price hit of significant size as well, and will be lower in overall resale value.
And the main concern also is that I want to maximize battery life to its fullest ad I'm afraid the added ram and more powerful processor will contribute to more battery drain than in the lower ram lower powered base models and also more heat and faster fan start times.
The added RAM will not rain your battery. Overall, it might EXTEND your battery life due to fewer page-ins and page-outs to the SSD. Granted, this used to be a bigger deal with hard drives, but, there is still power wasted when reading/writing rapidly to SSD, not to mention the additional wear placed on an SSD when doing this.
I would suspect that a savvy buyer of a used MBA would also ask to check the lifetime writes stats with trim-enabler or another tool, and factor that into their purchase.
Going from the ultimate at $1749 to a i5/4gb/256ssd at $1199 is almost $600 difference.
Ultimately, it's your choice. When I buy computers, I "invest" differently than you do, it would seem. While your main concern seems to be resale value, my main concern is the output in terms of productivity, which is where I get
my monetary and economic value out of a computer that I purchase. If I can store more on a system, and get more out of it in terms of heavy usage, then the extra money spent up front is money well spent.
So for me, more RAM equals better productivity, more tasks run with less frustration and delay, and better overall value.
Then again, I don't sell my computers right away. My "top line" work system is a 2012 iMac 27 inch, i7 with 24GB of RAM. And I have a 3 year old 2010 MBP that I'm replacing with a maxxed out 2013 macbook air. The new MBA will replace the MBP as my primary "on the go" computer, while the MBP will be demoted to being an at-home, leisure light-duty system to do things my iPad can't. Later, I'll get a new Haswell mac mini, and then I might sell/give away the MBP.
I will likely keep my MBA for two years. Maybe three.
I do not play games on a laptop at all, I never did so my question again is that I typically have Coda 2, Chrome, Safari with several tabs open, Mamp and
I'm coming from an Early MBP 2011 Sandy Bridge i5 with 16GB of RAM beach balling all over the place with 1TB 5400 RPM HD.
You're beachballing with 16GB of RAM. To me, that would indicate that 4GB is a pretty hard step down. While you will get a huge improvement with the SSD, it can vary with use over time as well as how much of that capacity is taken up with data.
However, the speed-up gained by higher RAM is constant and consistent.
Is the i5/4gb/256ssd enough for this or I'll struggle on the RAM? And it is better to get the ultimate?
If you're struggling now with 16GB of RAM, I think you will struggle with 4GB... EVEN with the SSD and the better processor. Although you're not playing games, you appears to be doing some heavy lifting with your web development, by running MAMP and probably having multiple tabs open in web browsers that have their own tasks requiring RAM and CPU.
Any CPU bottlenecks you get will be alleviated in mavericks with App Nap, most likely. But RAM usage will still be an issue.
) following this rationale.
