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Airs for School...

Drew017

Drew017

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 29, 2011
1,254
11
East coast, USA
I just found out that next semester, my school is switching to Mac! Yay! All the instructors and staff are getting MacBook Pros, and each student has the option to get a MacBook Air to use (and take home) for the semester.

Here's my issue- I already have a great MacBook! However, I think an Air would be cool to use... I just don't know what I'd do with it other than to mess around with, because my MacBook (White) has the disk slot, ports etc. that the Air doesn't. It also has great battery life...

To make it short... should I get one or not? What would I use it for if I did?

Thanks!!!

PS- I just found that today when I went to download an app, to my dismay my school network had blocked the App store!!! They also blocked MacRumors! :mad: luckily I have an iPod :cool:. What are they getting out of this? Since when is MacRumors a bad site?
 
Are they free? If so then definitely get one. If not then, well, I wouldn't bother
 
Congrats on the switch to Macs; I pushed for that until I left for college. At that point, I picked up an Air for myself to replace an aging PC laptop.

If the Air is free, not a whole lot of reason not to. It's a really portable and powerful machine for the specs. Over a white MacBook, the Air looks a whole lot better*. Other differences, backlit keyboard (I don't think the white had it) and higher resolution display. The SSD is a nice touch, too.

My high school had a tendency to block anything of use, too. Don't worry: It gets better once you get to college. Of course, the justification was always that the school network should be used for schoolwork and not for play, but since the people they tried to get to not play, still found ways around it, it only really served to annoy.

Curious that the iPod would succeed in accessing resources where the Mac would fail. I would expect the same behavior on both.

* My opinion. Everyone has different preferences on appearance.
 
I'm willing to bet an MBA would blow your MacBook out of the water in terms of performance... but that depends a lot on what you actually use your computer for.

I wouldn't bother if you have to pay for it. But it sounds like it's free since you're only using it for the semester? I think you'd like it.
 
EthanMiller said:
"Curious that the iPod would succeed in accessing resources where the Mac would fail. I would expect the same behavior on both."
Click to expand...

Try switching the user agent on safari (you need to enable develop menu in the advanced settings), to iPhone and see if you can browse the web that way.

On another note it might be worth asking what kind of software you are going to be using and if it will be compatible with the version of OSX running on your current mac?

A new MBA will give you a free update to Mountain Lion.
 
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They are free! I guess I will get one!

I use the opera mini browser on my iPod, so it gets through all the blocks.

Also, my MacBook runs Lion right now, but will be running ML in a few months :) and is wonderfully fast, even with 2gb of RAM!

Oh yea... And I like the design on both the Air and the white MacBook lol
 
Exciting. You can get Opera for Mac, but I don't know if it has the same feature as Mini where it gets the web pages and compresses them to send to the browser. It may be worth experimenting with.

I've always like the Mac design. The plastic was always my least favorite, but it's still leagues away from most* PC design.

*Some modern PC design comes close, or even surpasses it. In its day, though, there was nothing.
 
EthanMiller said:
Exciting. You can get Opera for Mac, but I don't know if it has the same feature as Mini where it gets the web pages and compresses them to send to the browser. It may be worth experimenting with.

I've always like the Mac design. The plastic was always my least favorite, but it's still leagues away from most* PC design.

*Some modern PC design comes close, or even surpasses it. In its day, though, there was nothing.
Click to expand...

I've tried it... but not at school! I haven't really thought about it. I think that the sites might have been blocked due to final exams, though I'm not sure why the App Store (And even store.apple.com as well as Apple's software update engine)

What do you mean by Plastic? Are you talking about the Opera theme? I seem to recall you could theme Opera like you can Chrome
 
Drew017 said:
I've tried it... but not at school! I haven't really thought about it. I think that the sites might have been blocked due to final exams, though I'm not sure why the App Store (And even store.apple.com as well as Apple's software update engine)

What do you mean by Plastic? Are you talking about the Opera theme? I seem to recall you could theme Opera like you can Chrome
Click to expand...

When I was in high school, they blocked non-productive sites so you wouldn't mess around in class/in computer labs. Forums/discussion sites were blocked as they weren't deemed productive, and merchant websites (virtually anywhere you could buy something) was blocked as well since it's not productive to your school work either.
 
Lucky bastard, two of the schools I've been to actually switched from Macs to PCs. Of course, these were aging multicoloured iMacs and eMacs, but the PCs aren't any better (running XP, half of them don't work, slow as hell)

But no, if they're free, get one for sure. And MBA's? Your school actually has Wi-Fi? :eek: Tell me you go to a Private/Montessori school, or something :p
 
Drew017 said:
What do you mean by Plastic? Are you talking about the Opera theme? I seem to recall you could theme Opera like you can Chrome
Click to expand...

The white plastic MacBooks, ala the one below.
25aug09_mbreds.jpg
 
KieranDotW said:
Lucky bastard, two of the schools I've been to actually switched from Macs to PCs. Of course, these were aging multicoloured iMacs and eMacs, but the PCs aren't any better (running XP, half of them don't work, slow as hell)

But no, if they're free, get one for sure. And MBA's? Your school actually has Wi-Fi? :eek: Tell me you go to a Private/Montessori school, or something :p
Click to expand...

My public school was part of some test roll out for wifi, it was great. Asides from the appstore being blocked as well as many other sites.
 
Sounds awesome! I wish my school would switch. We have dell optiplex Pentium machines now... pieces of s---. Luckily I never have to deal with blocked sites. I run all of the tech stuff at my school. Me and my friend were given complete control last year, as my school has 50 kids and no IT guy!

Also the router doesn't reach my whole school, but we found a couple of old G routers. Told the teachers we needed to set them up so their computers would work and we spent 2 ENTIRE school days "setting up" the routers... I love private school :cool:
 
Orange furball said:
Sounds awesome! I wish my school would switch. We have dell optiplex Pentium machines now... pieces of s---. Luckily I never have to deal with blocked sites. I run all of the tech stuff at my school. Me and my friend were given complete control last year, as my school has 50 kids and no IT guy!

Also the router doesn't reach my whole school, but we found a couple of old G routers. Told the teachers we needed to set them up so their computers would work and we spent 2 ENTIRE school days "setting up" the routers... I love private school :cool:
Click to expand...

with great power comes great responsibility.
 
...And yet we could get on youtube with no problem... what's with that?

No matter... I'm out of school anyway! Hopefully next semester it will change- Besides, I have wifi at home!
 
Drew017 said:
...And yet we could get on youtube with no problem... what's with that?

No matter... I'm out of school anyway! Hopefully next semester it will change- Besides, I have wifi at home!
Click to expand...

Do you have a phone that will turn into a hot spot? You can sell the password and change it every day. You would make tons.
 
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