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A Montevina MBA with more ram?

S

Skyldig

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 1, 2008
152
0
Hey guys,

I'm really interrested in buying a MBA in the late summer, when i'm going back to my third year at college.

I really hope they will make a revision when the Montevina platform hits the market, and the onboard GPU will be upgraded to X4500.

The "slow" 1,8Ghz prossecor i can live with. The only thing that i'm really afraid of, is the "low" capacity of ram. 2 Gb is fine now, but in a year or two i bet that 4 Gb will be almost required to run new programs decently.

I have two questions. I understand that nobody really knows the true answear, so i just ask for you best guesses.

1.) Do you think that apple will make a Montevina revision of the MBA in the late summer (june/july/august/september)?

2.) Do you think that the revision will allow 4 Gb ram, maybe as an option? Or maybe a single upgrade slot while the 2 Gb remains onbaord?

Thanks for the anwears.
 
Please explain what programmes will 'require' 4 GB to run in 1 years time.

Especially those that are mostly associated with the daily uses of the MBA (word processing, internet, email etc...)

It's also highly unlikely Apple will allow user upgradeable memory slot as it would require a whole new redesign.

If your doing power work that requires 4GB memory then you really need to be looking at a MacBook Pro as a going concern, and not the next minor revision to the MBA.
 
I just belive that 4 Gb (or at least the posibility to upgrade to 4 Gb) is required for a machine today, in order to have a future life over 2 year. The absence of upgradeposibilities in the MBA is the reason for my concern.
2 Gb is what is needed in todays operating systems in order for them to feel fluent and smooth, and i have no doubt that OSX 10.7 and maybe even 10.6 will need 4 Gb of ram to feel like 10.5 does with 2 Gb.

The same goes with Windows Os through Bootcamp.
 
If you want it just buy it, if something new comes out, just sell it. If it too expensive to do that, than you should be looking else where. I'm a student and if i couldn't afford the MBA i wouldn't have bought it no matter how cool it is to have one or how cool it looks. So if you like it, just get it. Computers will always advance in technology so there's never a perfect time to get one.
 
Skyldig said:
Hey guys,

I'm really interrested in buying a MBA in the late summer, when i'm going back to my third year at college.

I really hope they will make a revision when the Montevina platform hits the market, and the onboard GPU will be upgraded to X4500.

The "slow" 1,8Ghz prossecor i can live with. The only thing that i'm really afraid of, is the "low" capacity of ram. 2 Gb is fine now, but in a year or two i bet that 4 Gb will be almost required to run new programs decently.

I have two questions. I understand that nobody really knows the true answear, so i just ask for you best guesses.

1.) Do you think that apple will make a Montevina revision of the MBA in the late summer (june/july/august/september)?

2.) Do you think that the revision will allow 4 Gb ram, maybe as an option? Or maybe a single upgrade slot while the 2 Gb remains onbaord?

Thanks for the anwears.
Click to expand...

I dont think we're going to see new GPU or more RAM this year.

Processors might be upgraded at the end of the year, just in time for christmas.
 
thlayli said:
Nah, 640K should be enough for anybody!
Click to expand...

I didn't hear that for a while now, and it cracked me up yet again. What a famous quote.

Anyways, to the OP, I think 2GB of ram will be enough for the next few years easily, specially with the MBA. I had my MacBook just a few months back, and it was working very fine even with 1GB, and upgrading it to 2 meant no difference in regards to my daily routine for browsing, remotely managing servers and emails, plus iTunes, films, etc.

I think 2GB is more than enough for a machine which has an underpowered graphical card, therefore you wont be able to take advantage of Photoshop and other rendering softwares.

Ben
 
Skyldig said:
I just belive that 4 Gb (or at least the posibility to upgrade to 4 Gb) is required for a machine today, in order to have a future life over 2 year.
Click to expand...

Personally I think that 2Gb will be perfectly fine for what is essentially a secondary portable machine.
 
The Air is not supposed to be a desktop replacement. Nor is meant to be a Pro computer. It's meant to do 1 or 2 things at a time, at most. 2 Gigs is more than enough to run the OS, and 1 or 2 apps. You tell me 1 app that needs more than a Gig or RAM to operate and I'll tell you it needs to be rewritten.
 
Bootcamp

XP still runs fine in 512k or 768k of RAM. A gig is more than enough. So unless you are going to Vista-trash bootcamp, 2GB is fine.

Hell, a year ago 2GB of memory was rare and XP was running along fine.
 
Judging by the average product lifecycle of the MBPro - most likely the earliest a revision would be seen is September (this is just an eyeballed calculation using the assumption that the MBA will follow MBP update statistics). Now there have been instances, especially since the switch to Intel, that revisions have been made in less time. However, the norm is around 8 months.

I think there is a 45nm penryn about the size of the MBA processor scheduled to be released - as someone in another thread stated, the CPU that the Air was meant for. Now I dont know the truth to this claim, but I would say that is when you will see the next update.

My guess on what improvements will be:
Upgraded CPU
Larger HD (if we are lucky a bump to 5400 rpm)

Outside of that don't expect much more. Apple tends to do things in stages and there will not be a dramatic overhaul of the Air or its insides anytime soon since it is so new.

Now the MB and MBP are another story - they could see major updates when montevina is released and it seems like many laptop manufacturers are gearing up for this with huge discounts on current inventory.
 
I agree with other posters. Airs won't see revisions for quite a while. And they're probably not going to have 4G ram when updated.

Long story short, buy now and enjoy or buy same product at end of summer with a rev.B possibly around the corner in late fall. If in doubt, wait it out.
 
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