Buying a MacBook Air i5 or i7?

[kodeman53]

Thank you!
I'm a teacher so for me the i7 won't "GET MY JOB DONE QUICKER" for writing or web browsing for exemple, i have my laptop with me all day and battery is a priority.
However i wouldn't mind more CPU for my music production projects, that's why i was curious about the ratio CPU gain/battery life, but this seems to annoy some i7 fans or whatever they are...
By the way kobyh15, i actually don't really care about heat...

It's not the CPU gain/battery life ratio that's annoying, it's the endless navel gazing some people engage it about it. They act as if they keep asking questions in a thread, or better yet, start a new thread, the laws of physics will suddenly be lifted and they will be able to gain all the benefits of a faster CPU with none of the costs. The people who are unable, or unwilling, to prioritize their requirements, a life skill everyone who claims to be an adult, should have mastered before graduating from high school, are both entertaining and sad. Sad because if the simple 'Which MBA should I buy? decision sends them running to the Internet to seek advice from strangers, the real decisions of life will prove debilitating.

Since your stated priority is battery life, get the MBA13 with the I5.

 

[halledise]

 

[Mikkel.kg]

it's not a phrase, it's someone's name.




I think you will find it was KohPhiPhi who brought the 'religious aspect' in.
and had he taken the name of Allah or Mohammed in vain there'd be a huge outcry and a fatwah issued against him

It's often used as an exclamatory phrase in the same way that "oh my god" or "good lord" are.

Not everyone on this forum are god fearing individuals, and KohPhiPhi's use of the expression "jesus christ" can hardly be termed blasphemy.

 

[Ptdr]

Back to topic please...

 

[entatlrg]

With the i5/i7 being so marginally close in every respect it makes you wonder why Apple bothers to offer both.

 

[Zapdoc]

MBA 2012 i5 vs i7

Recently changed from 13 inch i5 to i7 fully loaded. Not noticed any appreciable difference in battery life, heat (runs very cool and quieter than older i 5) Very responsive - only do regular stuff e-mail/internet/ word/excel/powerpt/Pages / Ketnote downloads etc.

Fantastic kit pleased I changed.

 

[halledise]

 

[pandaguy]

Wow, you are all really feisty people. I've been a member of this board for about five days and can already notice how bitchiness seems to be the default tone.

 

[DVD9]

I can certainly see many aspects of your dilemma, one of which is the $400 price difference. While it is really only $100 to upgrade the processor, to get the i7 you also must upgrade the minimum SSD capacity to 256 minimum. That is where most of your upgrade cost is coming from. i5 vs. i7 aside, I will just recommend to you that, while you likely won't notice much of a perceivable difference between the processors given your actual use of the machine, you will very soon notice that the 128 GB SSD is your real limitation. If you can swing the $400 upgrade, do it for the doubling in storage you will receive and consider the processor boost an extra.

If the base 13 won't work for you than it's stupid not to get the Retina.

 

[Titanium81]

I have been using the 2012 MacBook Air 13" i5 for a few weeks and it is AWESOME! No need for the i7 unless you have extra money laying around or just want bragging rights...

 

[Barna Biro]

I have been using the 2012 MacBook Air 13" i5 for a few weeks and it is AWESOME! No need for the i7 unless you have extra money laying around or just want bragging rights...

People opting for even a marginally faster CPU doesn't mean they are looking for bragging rights... for some ( as myself ), it can matter a lot. Every second ( or tens of seconds ) I can save whenever compiling my projects, matters to me a lot. Of course, when some "serious power" is needed, I will surely not even think about trying to push the poor Air to it's limits... but that doesn't mean that a faster CPU is useless on the MBA. It's extremely useful if you can actually use it...

If you are a normal user who only reads news, mail and sometimes opens up and edits some Word / Excel / etc. documents then that's cool and YES, you'll most likely not see any real life benefits in getting the i7 over the i5.

 

[theSeb]

With the i5/i7 being so marginally close in every respect it makes you wonder why Apple bothers to offer both.

If they didn't, then there would be thousands of posts here full of people spewing rubbish about how Asus is better than Apple and Apple are losing their way, don't care about pros and only worry about iToys. Oh wait, that's a normal day.

 

[barjam]

More pot calling the kettle black.



Given this requirement, the key phrase being, "as smoothly as possible", you need the I7. Games use a lot of memory and processor.

In most cases the games would be gpu bound and not processor bound. It wouldn't surprise me if there was no difference between the two.

When I purchased my desktop (windows) i7 i did this knowing that the i5 was actually faster for many games because some games would get confused by the hyper threading. Faster development and video encoding were more important to me and game developers would eventually fix their issues (hopefully).

 

[Ptdr]

In most cases the games would be gpu bound and not processor bound. It wouldn't surprise me if there was no difference between the two.

When I purchased my desktop (windows) i7 i did this knowing that the i5 was actually faster for many games because some games would get confused by the hyper threading. Faster development and video encoding were more important to me and game developers would eventually fix their issues (hopefully).

Both 2012 macbook air's i5 and i7 have hyper threading...

 

[GBlansten]

Both 2012 macbook air's i5 and i7 have hyper threading...

True. You get a modest performance gain with the i7 but it isn't huge.

 

[riveting]

Yes, people are saying the difference in battery life, heat is insignificant, which is true, but so is the performance difference. Both i5 and i7 has hyper threading, so the efficiency of the two processor is probably not much different. Of course, if the cost of i5 and i7 is the same, everybody would be jumping gun on i7, but there is a $100 difference, so it is up to individule to decide whether it is worth it to gain a small performance increase with i7.

Personally, I think base model is always the most economic purchase, except maybe the ram upgrade.

 

[landed]

But does it cause discomfort of use ?

I just would like to know from a practical sense does it get hot to type after 10 hours on the go doing normal work and playing perhaps some music on the side. This is what I am asking since my dell burns my palms ! So I am really looking to avoid this at all costs.

 

[robvas]

Do you want 10% more performance for about 10% more $? Then get the i7

 

[oxfordguy]

I just would like to know from a practical sense does it get hot to type after 10 hours on the go doing normal work and playing perhaps some music on the side. This is what I am asking since my dell burns my palms ! So I am really looking to avoid this at all costs.

No, it only gets hot if you really push the CPU for long periods e.g. running demanding games

 

[mayuka]

I just would like to know from a practical sense does it get hot to type after 10 hours on the go doing normal work and playing perhaps some music on the side. This is what I am asking since my dell burns my palms ! So I am really looking to avoid this at all costs.

The i7 handles multi-tasking better as it allows to switch faster between processes. It also scales up the "turbo-boost" faster, as well as scaling it down again, making the system a tiny little bit more responsive. I'd say it's not worth the money, though. Only if you're doing some cpu-intensive work like video encoding or those kinds of things it'll make a real difference.