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A question for 4GB Air Owners

DancyMunchkin said:
I don't believe there's a standard definition for 'university student'. :D

How much space are you using on your other computers?
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I probably should of been more specific on that one :D

On my iMac I have most of my videos, all of my music and so on, with the 3TB Fusion drive I have around 2.38TB left. On my 2011 MacBook Pro I have 463.17GB free out of 749.3

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Meister said:
What are you using the macbook for? Apps? Files?
In general 256gb is plenty as long as you dont do a lot of media work.

I have 256gb on my rmbp and I have a 2tb external for my photo libary.
Withou the photo libary the 256gb is enough.
Itunes files (movies, music) I keep on my mini.
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I mainly use my MacBook Pro for writing documents in Pages, watching iTunes content (mainly TV shows) but these are in iTunes in the cloud. I also do a lot of web browsing and work with Final Draft, iBooks Author and just general writing.

The main reasons I've been thinking about a MacBook Air is because of portability and the brilliant 12 hour battery life I have been hearing about. Don't get me wrong I love my 15" MacBook Pro 2011, it still works great apart from a little slow on boot up, but it's not very practical to carry around in my bag when commuting to and from university on the bus, especially with other things in my bag. Also the SSD speeds would probably be more help.
 
Dave245 said:
On my 2011 MacBook Pro I have 463.17GB free out of 749.3
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what takes up so much space on your mbp?
For mentioned typewriter activites the 4/128 base mba sounds like the most economical solution. Especially since you already have an iMac and mbp.
 
Meister said:
what takes up so much space on your mbp?
For mentioned typewriter activites the 4/128 base mba sounds like the most economical solution. Especially since you already have an iMac and mbp.
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According to my storage its audio 3.2GB, movies 158.76GB but i don't know where because my iTunes movies and TV shows are in the iTunes in the cloud. photos 6.82GB, Apps 40.15GB, backups 10.79GB and other 66.38GB, some of these i'm not sure why they are so high such as movies and other.

EDIT. I've just found that some of my programmes downloaded without me realising it, i have since deleted them from my mbp and now have 95.39GB of Movies taking up space.
 
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Dave245 said:
According to my storage its audio 3.2GB, movies 158.76GB but i don't know where because my iTunes movies and TV shows are in the iTunes in the cloud. photos 6.82GB, Apps 40.15GB, backups 10.79GB and other 66.38GB, some of these i'm not sure why they are so high such as movies and other.

EDIT. I've just found that some of my programmes downloaded without me realising it, i have since deleted them from my mbp and now have 95.39GB of Movies taking up space.
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if you dont plan on keeping movies and get an external for backups the 256gb on the mba should be plenty.
 
Meister said:
if you dont plan on keeping movies and get an external for backups the 256gb on the mba should be plenty.
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No i plan on using it for university work and writing documents. If i were to watch anything on it, it would be from Netflix or from iTunes in the cloud. At the moment i have a 1TB external hard drive i use for back ups of my iMac and Macbook Pro. Because i've signed up for the OSX Yosemite public beta i have done a back-up using Time Machine.
 
Dave245 said:
Things do change over time, someone might want to only use it for writing essays in Pages or Word, but then a year later they might want to do some light editing. I have always gone with the thought that it's better to have more RAM and not need it, than it is to need it and not have it. That's just my personal opinion.
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Yeah, 8GB of RAM isn't personally worth it unless I was using Photoshop on a weekly basis. 4GB will be fine for light editing. It just would not be worth the extra 100$ for me. By the time I needed 8GB of RAM, I would need a more powerful computer than a 2013 MBA. I guess we will just agree to disagree :p.

Matt
 
I had a 2011 i5/4gb/256gb 13" MBA and never felt that it was slow in any way, and I run some professional software. Last summer I upgraded to a 2013 i7/8gb/512gb 11" MBA and I do see faster rendering in Final Cut Pro and less latency in Logic Pro.

But for everyday kinds of things, they are surprisingly similar. I sold the old machine to a close friend and when visiting we often have them both side by side. And in this case, the new machine has the benefit of the i7 and SSD that's almost twice as fast as well as the additional RAM.
 
I've got a 2010 MBA with 4GB and a 2013 MBA with 8GB. Doing what you've described you'd be hard pushed to tell which was which (apart from the backlit keyboard - why did they even think about removing this for the 2010 model :confused:)

Start playing about with large RAW images in Aperture/Lightroom/etc or running any VMs and it quite easy to tell, although some of that will be down to the lower spec. processor, GPU and SSD. I don't play games but I suspect these would also highlight the difference.

Unless you have a specific requirement for 8GB, save the money for a replacement in 3 years time and reassess your requirements then.

Simple :cool:
 
Osarkon said:
Hi all.

I've read all the 4 vs 8gb debate threads to death, but none have the answer I'm looking for.

Basically, I'm looking for feedback from people who own the 4GB version as to how smooth does the laptop run.

My last macbook was the very first intel core duo which I maxed out the ram to 2GB and it ran like a dream on Snow Leopard.

So to those of you who have the base model, is there much lag etc in daily usage? I don't mind waiting a bit longer for applications to load, I just can't stand lag in the UI when navigating around.

Note that there are plenty of 4 vs 8 threads already on the forum, I'd like to try and avoid that debate this time, hopefully the answers will give a more 'real world' feel for how the amount of ram influences performance.
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I have the 4gb model and I never have any lag at all. In fact, I've never seen the beach ball like I did on the old white Macbook I had for a bit. My daily usage is as follows:

Youtube, writing(either in MS Word or Google Docs), some Excel work, Spotify, Google Music, Netflix, Some photo editing and lots of surfing. I like to think my usage is just about that of an average user if not less.

If your usage habits are similar to mine, you will never have an issue and probably won't for several years. Plus the resale value of a Mac is good enough that if in the future you need a more powerful machine, you can sell your current and purchase the new one for about the same as you would spend maxing out your current machine.

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Boyd01 said:
Last summer I upgraded to a 2013 i7/8gb/512gb 11" MBA
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How was the adjustment going from the 13 to the 11? I am happy with 13 but still have the 11 in the back of my mind. I am thinking of picking up an 11 and either giving it to my wife, or keeping it and giving her my 13. I work on a desktop all day at work but at home it is my primary machine. Do you use the 11 as a primary machine?
 
capathy21 said:
How was the adjustment going from the 13 to the 11? I am happy with 13 but still have the 11 in the back of my mind.
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That sounds like me a year ago. :) I had the opportunity to help my friend who needed a new laptop so I sold her my 2011 13" MBA at a "sweetheart" price. And it let me go up to 8gb, the 512ssd and USB3 which weren't available in 2011.

But I just love the 11" MBA. From the specs you might not think the size/weight is so different, but it really is. Such a delight for travel, also using around the house. It's my primary computer and I have a big screen and keyboard that I use quite a bit at home.
 
Boyd01 said:
That sounds like me a year ago. :) I had the opportunity to help my friend who needed a new laptop so I sold her my 2011 13" MBA at a "sweetheart" price. And it let me go up to 8gb, the 512ssd and USB3 which weren't available in 2011.

But I just love the 11" MBA. From the specs you might not think the size/weight is so different, but it really is. Such a delight for travel, also using around the house. It's my primary computer and I have a big screen and keyboard that I use quite a bit at home.
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If you didn't have the external monitor would you still prefer the 11?
 
Osarkon said:
That's fantastic, exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for. :)
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I just bought a 2011 Air with 4gb ram as my second computer. For what you will be doing its fine don't bother with the 8gb. Even if you do want to edit it will be fine because video editing uses CPU speed and not ram, it wont be lightning fast but the ram wouldn't make a difference there anyway. If say you were running a virtual machine(windows inside OSX) then you would need the 8gb (probably a MBP with more to be honest).

People talk a lot about "future proofing" and its kind of a pipe dream(no such thing). If you are buying a MBA you are getting it for size, weight, portability and a full OSX experience. its not a power house computer and it doesn't claim to be.

From what I read here I say go for 4GB I promise you wont notice a difference and you'll be very happy.
 
capathy21 said:
If you didn't have the external monitor would you still prefer the 11?
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Well that is rather meaningless to me, because I can't imagine only using a laptop without an external monitor. Before getting the 13" MBA, my main machine was a 2008 15" MBP. Here's the way I view things… the 13" screen was sort of "neither here nor there" for me. Not big enough to give the same experience as a 15" screen, not quite small enough to be ultraportable.

Have to say, the 11" MBA is my favorite computer of all time and I go all the way back the the 512k "Fat Mac" in 1985 (Apple ][ before that). There is just something really appealing about having all this power in such a tiny package.

Of course, there are at least as many threads about 11" vs 13" as there are about 4gb vs 8gb. Both subjects have been beaten to death around here, and the only conclusion I can draw is that it's very personal and you must decide for yourself.
 
I have the base 11" Air and I find it more than capable. Short list of things I use it for include the usual suspects (Mail, web, iTunes, Calendar, Movies) as well as CAD, 3D Modeling & Rendering, Illustrator, Photoshop, Pixelmator & Lightroom.

No complaints.
 
I have the maxed out i7 8 GB RAM/512 GB SSD 2013 MBA and for my usage, the 8 GB RAM was probably necessary because I doing a lot of video editing. I also needed the larger SSD for that reason as well because I'd rather store as much as possible locally than carrying around an external backup at all times just in case I need a file that isn't on my hard drive. I actually wish Apple would go to 768 GB or 1 TB for the SSD.
 
I can open almost every single app I want and the 4gb of RAM handles everything with ease. Firefox, Mail, Word, Excel, Skype, Tweetdeck, iTunes, Scribe, iMessage, anti virus, dropbox, hwmonitor, & probably some other apps I'm forgetting.
 
I could make my MacBook air lag when I was running Visual Studio in a Windows 8 virtual machine. Other then that, it was almost impossible to make it lag.
 
Just to pile on, my MBA with 4GB of RAM has never lagged for me, even when multitasking. I can run WoW in the background while using Safari with a couple tabs and it has never been an issue. 4GB of RAM may not be enough for a small group of resource intensive applications, but for day-to-day use it's plenty. OSX is great at memory management and seems to be able to keep itself running smoothly without issues.
 
4GB is fine for me too. I use quite a lot of intensive applications (Adobe and some 3D). Memory management and memory compression combined with the fast SSD work really well to keep the machine nimble. It's always good practice to close apps you're not currently using but I've pushed my Air way beyond its memory capacity and it has got the job done.

I love this machine....I have bigger more powerful Macs but the Air is in a class of its own.
 
Having sold my 11"/8GB for a 13"/4GB a few months ago, here's my experience.

There is a difference. I usually have the following open at once: Messages, a Word document ranging from 1 - 400 pages, Dictionary, a 14 page InDesign document, Safari with the same 10-12 tabs consistently open (w/ Pandora playing), a 50MB jpeg and a 5MB jpeg open in preview, and two 100+ page pdfs open in preview. Most of these are in full screen.

With the 11"/8GB I never noticed any sort of lag that I remember. With the 13"/4GB, it takes a bit (2-3 seconds) for the large jpeg to redraw. Pdf scrolling seems to lag a little compared to the 11". Safari isn't quite as snappy :)rolleyes:), and it comparatively lags a bit when reloading pages. Etc.

Am I unhappy with the 13". No, but when I upgrade my Air in the future, I will buy one with 8GB (or whatever the max is at that time).
 
I never have anywhere near that number of applications/documents open at the same time. But if I did, I would certainly want 8gb. Sounds like you made a bad decision to downgrade to 4gb.

Personally, I used to have more applications running together when I was using a 2008 MBP, because it was so slow to open them. But with the MBA, programs start so quickly that I don't leave them running unless I'm actively working on something simultaneously.

I went with 8gb when I upgraded from my 2011 MBA, just because I could. :)
 
capathy21 said:
Ram aside, do you feel the increase in size was a good change? Or do you miss the 11 inch?
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I loved my 11". I used it for writing and I know some people say it's too small, but I thought it was perfect (and I'm a big guy 6'4"). I don't have a problem with the size of the 13" though. I switched to it simply for the battery life. If they made an 11" with the 12 hour+ battery I'd get that in a heartbeat.

So to directly answer our questions, I don't feel the change was good or bad, but I do miss the 11".
 
If cost is an issue, get a refurb 8GB model and have the best of both worlds. :)
 
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