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Anyone order the 2012 11" for their 'main machine'?

Definitely...

I bought the base 2011 MBA as my main development machine. I'm a telecommuting coffee house connoisseur who's always on the move so the footprint is absolutely invaluable.

As a developer (xCode, FlexBuilder, .NET via Parallels VM's) that dabbles in design (Photoshop), photography (Lightroom), and music (Logic Pro), I can confidently say, performance wise, it's MORE than sufficient. With full-screen support and a handle on various touchpad gestures, you quickly adapt to the limited screen real estate. But, for when I need more, I have a 1080P display sitting on my desk. Win-win.

The ONLY time I had an issue with the 128GB HD was when I needed to move a Win 7 VM to the SSD. Outside of that, there's plenty of room if you don't bloat it with media that really doesn't need to be taking up onboard SSD storage.

I use Spotify exclusively but do keep my old 140GB iTunes library around an external... I import my photos directly to the SSD for edits but them move them onto an external when finished.

That said, I decided to sell her a few days ago for a maxed out 2012 11'' MBA (2.0, 256, 8). USB3, 6Gbps SSD, significant CPU upgrade from base 2011, double the RAM, rumors of SLIGHTLY better battery life... I can't wait.
 
rookpsu said:
maxed out 2012 11'' MBA (2.0, 256, 8). USB3, 6Gbps SSD, significant CPU upgrade from base 2011, double the RAM, rumors of SLIGHTLY better battery life... I can't wait.
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Congrat's. The 11" sure packs some power in a little frame.

What's the ship time on yours?

What I'm still trying to determine on the 2012's is,

a) is the battery life better, if so by how much?
b) i5 or i7, will the i5 run longer than the i7 on battery, if so by how much?

Reviews should be coming online soon I hope.
 
@entartirg: great to see that there are more people with this problem :)

The 13" MBA is a more rationale decision, but the 11" is such a nice piece of technics. I hope you'll find your personal optimal device. At the moment I'm almost sure that I'll go with the 11" - that's the current status :p
 
Ottonaldo said:
@entartirg: great to see that there are more people with this problem :)

The 13" MBA is a more rationale decision, but the 11" is such a nice piece of technics. I hope you'll find your personal optimal device. At the moment I'm almost sure that I'll go with the 11" - that's the current status :p
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i was almost sure of it, but the battery was the tipping point to getting the 13"
 
Uh no!

The family has 3 2110 11" refurbs as our main machines.My Daughter used hers to get her Masters,and is using it to get her PHD.
My wife and I use ours to run our Transportation business.
We manage data bases,customer lists,location maps,business contacts, ad revenue, and maintenance logs.
All have C2D 1.6 4GB Ram, and OWC 480 GB SSD's. They fly, couldn't be happier:cool:
 
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When I first considered the 2010 MBA, I was sorely tempted by the 11 inch model but finally settled on the 13 inch model, primarily for two reasons. First, I wasn't sure that my ever aging eyeballs could deal with the 11 inch model's rather small display on an all day every day basis and, second, I really needed 256GB of storage, an option that wasn't available on the 2010 11 inch MBA. As noted in an earlier post, I will almost certainly be buying the 2012 13 inch Ultimate (i7 chip, 8GB of RAM, 512GB of flash storage).
 
snapper64 said:
Do you use the Air with an external monitor at all?
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Nope. At my former job I had 3 hooked to a PC for doing .NET dev (2 24" and 1 21"). When I first started working some 15 years ago apparently I got by okay on a 17" tube monitor throwing 1024 x 768.

Web dev I've found benefits more from learning how to be minimalist with your environment. I use Sublime Text 2 for my editor and Chrome for my browser, visor pop ups for both finder and terminal, and as all my other tools are in the cloud so Chrome for those. I use Divvy for tile management.

I feel much faster this way than when I was using 3 monitors... not getting cricks in my neck, etc, almost all movements are done with my fingers in home key row, minimally using the trackpad.

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gwsat said:
You should be delighted by how well your new 11 inch MBA handles VMs. I have been running VMware Fusion on my 2010 13 inch MBA ever since I bought it in October 2010. It has handled all of the Windows apps I have thrown at it, despite its having only a C2D chip and 4GB of RAM. With an i7 chip and 8GB of RAM on the job, you should be set for the foreseeable future.
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Yeah, I don't know if I'll be loading Windows just yet, but probably other instances of OSX or linux. I only got the i5, was on the fence on that but the machine will be so much faster than what I currently have and certainly will upgrade to Haswell when it comes out.
 
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rookpsu said:
Ugh. I wish I had a ship time.

I ordered late Tuesday night. I'm still "Processing". Expected delivery is 18th-20th though.
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That is crazy. I cancelled by retina and ordered my air today and it's already preparing to ship
 
Will try and pick up an 11" 128/4 tomorrow at the apple store, am up/downgrading from a 2009 15" MBP, which before I started travelling so much was fine, but now I am fed up lugging it around.

Half the time though it will be docked into my 21" Display so should perform just as well as the MBP.

Here's hoping they have stock tomorrow afternoon :cool:
 
Get the 11" for the portability and hook it up to a bigger display when at a desktop. I hook my Dell 13" to a monitor anyway when I'm at work as it's more comfortable and wish it were smaller when I carry it out.
 
rookpsu said:
It was just updated to "preparing for shipping".

Did you get a BTO? It seems as if a lot of the upgraded builds took a bit longer to get out the door.
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Yeah and within an hour it was preparing to ship. I wonder of it is b.c they are doing a massive ship tonight. The app card already shipped and will be here tomorrow
 
At the end, I picked up a 11" 128GB MBA yesterday. It fits good and I'm really happy. But it's not my main machine. I have a 27" iMac and an iPad 1.
 
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