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Anyone got the $1699 MacBook Air with i7 instead of i5
- Thread starter pectin232
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The i7 is a small boost in processor speed, a little more cache on the chip, and overall may result in about 10% improvement in processor intensive apps. It's not an across the board 10% faster user experience, remember, only really shows up in apps that are taxing the CPU heavily, and even then it probably wouldn't really be too noticeable.
Hi, I got the i7 last August coz the i5 wasn't available anymore. I've never had any problems. I'm satisfied with battery life which is 6-7 hrs, no heat, fan noise isn't there for normal tasks, the i7 is fast - so fast that I would say there are more than enough resources left compared to what I do. I'm using it for iPhoto, mail, web, apps, skype, light gaming, 720 & 1080 video, iTunes. Soon I'm gone dig down in iMovie and am sure it handles it well. Most users are happy with the i5 and some say the i7 has battery and heat issue, however, I didn't notice anything. But I don't know if I would be fine with the i5, I never tried such machine - I just know my i7 13" Air is the best portable I've owned and used and my company HP computer really is a pain to use
Enjoy it!
I got the i7 because, after the 256GB upgrade, it was only an extra $90 with the student discount. Figured, if I'm spending a grand and a half already, might as well go all the way. Also, I hope it might be rarer and therefore hold it's value a bit better on ebay....
When purchasing the i7 is it possible to buy it with a high spec SSD instead of the flash drives that come with the Macbook Air as standard?
I'm about to purchase a 11" i7 but I'd like a really fast SSD in it, the flash drives only have read/write speeds of around 200/250mb per second and the better SSDs have read/write speeds of 450/500mb per second
I got the 13"/256GB i5 model myself, but would have gotten the i7 if it were available off-the-shelf instead of build to order....
Awww
So the only option is a 256GB instead of a 128GB flash drive? I want a really fast SSD
Awww
I want a really fast SSD
In real life usage you aren't going to see any difference. The SSD on my MBA is blisteringly fast. You just aren't going to see any difference unless you are going multi-gigabyte video files all day long.
Awww
I want a really fast SSD
If you don't need the i7, just by the 128GB version, pop on macsales:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Aura_Pro_Express
select your favourite SSD size and speed (I recommend the 6G version) and sell your SSD HD on ebay, if you find a Samsung it's an easy sale, especially for people with a base 11".
Enjoy your new SSD in your Air...
i7
I bought the i7 over the i5 with the 256gb SSD. I personally have not used an i5 so I don't know the real difference, but like you said, if you're already planning on spending ~1,500, what's the difference of $90.00 (student discount, of course)?
I bought the i7 over the i5 with the 256gb SSD. I personally have not used an i5 so I don't know the real difference, but like you said, if you're already planning on spending ~1,500, what's the difference of $90.00 (student discount, of course)?
i7 > i5.
Whether the extra boost is worth $100 to you, that's a personal choice. Me, I wanted the fastest MBA I could get my hands on.
Whether the extra boost is worth $100 to you, that's a personal choice. Me, I wanted the fastest MBA I could get my hands on.
A bit OT, but if you upgrade your SSD with one of these, does anyone make an external case that you can put the old SSD into? I guess it would need to have Thunderbolt to take advantage of the fast SSD.
OWC offers external case for MBA SSDs. You can purchase it when you actually try to purchase their SSD upgrade. Check it out on their website.
The difference isn't exactly 90$ for more speed.
@OP: If you're planning to game at all on it, DON'T get the i7.
The i5 is enough for any task really, and the i7 will result in an 8% speed buff but will heat a lot more.
My friend got the 13" with i7 and it doesn't work on windows, it shuts down because of heat while gaming.
I have the 11", which has less space to ventilate, but I can game perfectly fine without it getting too hot, and I have the i5.
And even if you don't game, heat is really annoying in laptops, especially ultraportables that you should be able to use on your lap with no problem.
To sum up, don't get the i7. It isn't worth the money or the heat for such a small (and useless if you ask me) speed bump.
I think your friend got a bunk laptop. I have the i7 13" MBA, and I use it to play games in OS X and Win7... no heat issues at all... ever. The bottom gets warm sometimes, but nothing substantial compared to how hot my older C2D 13" MBP would get.
MBA i7 or i5
I purchased a fully loaded 11" MBA last August. Despite the poor excuse for an OS on board (Lion, if you guessed), the machine has an i7, 4GB RAM, 256GB SSD. The machine is dedicated to two different, but nonetheless taxing uses. The most taxing use is downloading and processing RAW images from a Canon 7D, using Aperture. Each image is approximately 18 MB and at 256GB taking away space for OS and apps leaves me with room for 1000 images. I do enough post processing work on the machine that I usually leave about 300MB for image copies. The machine is fast and furious for the kind of workflow I use, and heat issues are NOT!!. Battery life is stressed as when transferring and editing images I can at the most get 5.5 hours. I monitor things with IStat.
The other use is limited geospatial processing - here again I use sat imagery and open source image processing. Here too heat is not an issue. Data is usually highly compressed so there are no issues with loads, but processing images using IR and multi-spectral apps - well, it takes a hit, but does get the job done. Compared to my MBP i7 and IMac i7, time to process a 100mb image is roughly 5 times slower. Needless to say, I cannot hold many images on the machine as the programs and 5-7 images max out the SSD. I just wish they would hurry up and put out some reasonably priced thunderbolt HD's.
Having three variations i7 chips on three machines, I am most impressed and would not ever hesitate to recommend getting a machine with this chip, so long as you have applications that demand such power.
I purchased a fully loaded 11" MBA last August. Despite the poor excuse for an OS on board (Lion, if you guessed), the machine has an i7, 4GB RAM, 256GB SSD. The machine is dedicated to two different, but nonetheless taxing uses. The most taxing use is downloading and processing RAW images from a Canon 7D, using Aperture. Each image is approximately 18 MB and at 256GB taking away space for OS and apps leaves me with room for 1000 images. I do enough post processing work on the machine that I usually leave about 300MB for image copies. The machine is fast and furious for the kind of workflow I use, and heat issues are NOT!!. Battery life is stressed as when transferring and editing images I can at the most get 5.5 hours. I monitor things with IStat.
The other use is limited geospatial processing - here again I use sat imagery and open source image processing. Here too heat is not an issue. Data is usually highly compressed so there are no issues with loads, but processing images using IR and multi-spectral apps - well, it takes a hit, but does get the job done. Compared to my MBP i7 and IMac i7, time to process a 100mb image is roughly 5 times slower. Needless to say, I cannot hold many images on the machine as the programs and 5-7 images max out the SSD. I just wish they would hurry up and put out some reasonably priced thunderbolt HD's.
Having three variations i7 chips on three machines, I am most impressed and would not ever hesitate to recommend getting a machine with this chip, so long as you have applications that demand such power.