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Can M2 Air 8/10/16/512 get my daughter through College?

Ay-Yo-Its-Edge

Ay-Yo-Its-Edge

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 23, 2022
23
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Real World heavy users/College M2 Air Users, this is more of a question for you.

Do you think that overall the 13.6" M2 Air with 8/10/16/512 will be enough to last through 5 years of college?

I'm not normally torn/undecided on what upgrades to get for myself as I know my workflow & needs. This isn't the case now as our daughter is preparing to move to New Zealand for college (Veterinary School) and we need to get her a new laptop that will last her as close to 5 years as possible (it's a 5 year course vs 8 in Merica). It's been more than a few years since I've been in a classroom and I'm not even sure what programs are used in Vet school let alone the system requirements that would be suggested/required. She wants portability and I've tried to push her into the MBP 14 but she's pretty adamant about having the lightest load to carry.

Storage isn't a concern as she can always use iCloud/external but I've never used the M1 or M2 air and my concern is with the GPU mainly. I will make sure her new computer has a minimal of 16GB Ram (8GB unified is still just 8GB) but do you think that overall the M2 Air with 8/10/16/512 will last 5 years of heavy use?

Again when it comes to what I need as a full time photographer I base upgrades/needs off my programs and I currently use an M1 Ultra 20/64/64/1TB studio and is in no way a comparison to the MBA. Thank you in advance for your insights and/or real world use advice.

Mahalo
Rob
 
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1BadManVan said:
Oh yea, more then enough for her and school. She will absolutely love it, these machines are little beasts for performance and extremely efficient
Click to expand...

Do you think she needs the 8/10 then or will the 8/8 cpu/gpu be sufficient? Don't shame me but I'm still using my Mid 2015 MBP 15" 😬 so I have literally no idea of real world performance of the AS laptops, reading benchmark charts isn't the same as hearing from real users. I use my Studio desktop for 99% of my work and laptop just for tethering and day to day basics.
 
Ay-Yo-Its-Edge said:
Do you think she needs the 8/10 then or will the 8/8 cpu/gpu be sufficient? Don't shame me but I'm still using my Mid 2015 MBP 15" 😬 so I have literally no idea of real world performance of the AS laptops, reading benchmark charts isn't the same as hearing from real users. I use my Studio desktop for 99% of my work and laptop just for tethering and day to day basics.
Click to expand...
Either should be fine im sure. But i would go for the 10 core just for the future proofing if shes keeping it atleast 5 years
 
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1BadManVan said:
Either should be fine im sure. But i would go for the 10 core just for the future proofing if shes keeping it atleast 5 years
Click to expand...
That’s the plan as long as nothing happens to it. Not to compare but if it’s as durable as my 2015 MBP she should be good, I hope 🤞
 
I RECOMMEND Talking to an admission officer/ academic advisor/ etc and ask them about the software needed and used at school. There *MAY BE* some unique software used in the Vet industry that I don't know about. If there is no special software needed for her program, I would get her a MacBook Air, M2, 16GB of RAM, 15" screen. Why this system:

1. She *MAY* need to use Windows for some weird, specific, niche programs. I was a business major, and I took a statistics class, and there was a specific Windows based program I had to use. Having 16GB of RAM would allow her to install Windows 11 (ARM) as a VM with 8GBs of RAM, letting her use whatever program she needs. Parallels is cheap for students.

2. Besides that, I expect she'll need the following programs:
- Zoetro. It's a reference manager, and allows easy tracking of references and other source documents (https://www.zotero.org/)
- Scrivener. It's a writing program. NOT a word processing program. It will be helpful to keep a trail of her work (it can save different versions), in case a professor ever claims she's using ChatGPT to write her essays. Very powerful program https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview
- A good OCR program. She may have to use an online library, and pull down PDFs that are not OCR'd. ABBY Finereader is an excellent program
- Microsoft Office. Use the Mac version if possible.

3. I also recommend a good case to protect the machine when not in use, and maybe a screen protector? I like matte screen protects that reduces glare. It will *SLIGHTLY* change the colors though (which will cause people who work with graphics to say it's not good), but won't matter for her use case.

4. The 15" would give her lots of space to write, work, and view images.

The MacBook Air M2 will last five years or more.
 
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Ay-Yo-Its-Edge said:
Real World heavy users/College M2 Air Users, this is more of a question for you.

Do you think that overall the 13.6" M2 Air with 8/10/16/512 will be enough to last through 5 years of college?

I'm not normally torn/undecided on what upgrades to get for myself as I know my workflow & needs. This isn't the case now as our daughter is preparing to move to New Zealand for college (Veterinary School) and we need to get her a new laptop that will last her as close to 5 years as possible (it's a 5 year course vs 8 in Merica). It's been more than a few years since I've been in a classroom and I'm not even sure what programs are used in Vet school let alone the system requirements that would be suggested/required. She wants portability and I've tried to push her into the MBP 14 but she's pretty adamant about having the lightest load to carry.

Storage isn't a concern as she can always use iCloud/external but I've never used the M1 or M2 air and my concern is with the GPU mainly. I will make sure her new computer has a minimal of 16GB Ram (8GB unified is still just 8GB) but do you think that overall the M2 Air with 8/10/16/512 will last 5 years of heavy use?

Again when it comes to what I need as a full time photographer I base upgrades/needs off my programs and I currently use an M1 Ultra 20/64/64/1TB studio and is in no way a comparison to the MBA. Thank you in advance for your insights and/or real world use advice.

Mahalo
Rob
Click to expand...

I can tell you without hesitation that it would be more than plenty for an advanced degree in statistics. I can’t imagine veterinary medicine needing more.

b&
 
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Just brought a basic M1 Air into the household for the same reason (starting college, 5 year projected lifespan).
So you'll probably be fine.
 
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Yes, no problem. A lot of students will have far less capable computers. If you have any doubt, feel free to ask her advisor or instructors. It is, after all, their job to help students be successful.

Of course, it may not last for the entire period, because people have been known to drop or lose their computers.
 
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That'll be more than enough. An M1 Air would be plenty, as for anything but the most advanced software single core and disk performance are all that matters. Beyond that, she would just need to make sure she has enough drive space for whatever files she will be loading onto it, but it's likely those would mostly be tiny text files and maybe some images. She's not going to be editing feature films or processing 100+TB datasets on her MBA :)
 
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Ay-Yo-Its-Edge said:
Real World heavy users/College M2 Air Users, this is more of a question for you.

Do you think that overall the 13.6" M2 Air with 8/10/16/512 will be enough to last through 5 years of college?

I'm not normally torn/undecided on what upgrades to get for myself as I know my workflow & needs. This isn't the case now as our daughter is preparing to move to New Zealand for college (Veterinary School) and we need to get her a new laptop that will last her as close to 5 years as possible (it's a 5 year course vs 8 in Merica). It's been more than a few years since I've been in a classroom and I'm not even sure what programs are used in Vet school let alone the system requirements that would be suggested/required. She wants portability and I've tried to push her into the MBP 14 but she's pretty adamant about having the lightest load to carry.

Storage isn't a concern as she can always use iCloud/external but I've never used the M1 or M2 air and my concern is with the GPU mainly. I will make sure her new computer has a minimal of 16GB Ram (8GB unified is still just 8GB) but do you think that overall the M2 Air with 8/10/16/512 will last 5 years of heavy use?

Again when it comes to what I need as a full time photographer I base upgrades/needs off my programs and I currently use an M1 Ultra 20/64/64/1TB studio and is in no way a comparison to the MBA. Thank you in advance for your insights and/or real world use advice.

Mahalo
Rob
Click to expand...
you should find out if her program requires specific applications that can work in osx. if the answer to that is yes then the apple silicon macs are more than enough.
 
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My daughter used a Macbook 12" for almost her entire collegiate career (had an issue, so I got her a new Air). It fell one semester short of her graduation. Surprisingly, it was not a keyboard issue.

So, yeah, depending on the usage, it should be fine.
 
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Ay-Yo-Its-Edge said:
Do you think she needs the 8/10 then or will the 8/8 cpu/gpu be sufficient? Don't shame me but I'm still using my Mid 2015 MBP 15" 😬 so I have literally no idea of real world performance of the AS laptops, reading benchmark charts isn't the same as hearing from real users. I use my Studio desktop for 99% of my work and laptop just for tethering and day to day basics.
Click to expand...

The new M2 Air is far faster than your 15" MBP. It's faster than or at least on par with 16" Intel MacBook Pro from 2019-2020 even. So her M2 Air is actually a few grades above your 2015 15" MacBook in performance already.

Granted, Windows compatibility is a big issue depending on her coursework, but... let's just say there are workarounds. For instance:

Anyway, I think these use cases are very edge cases. If your daughter can't get these apps to work on her MacBook, she could also just ask a friend who has a Windows computer to help her with these things.
 
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bill-p said:
The new M2 Air is far faster than your 15" MBP. It's faster than or at least on par with 16" Intel MacBook Pro from 2019-2020 even. So her M2 Air is actually a few grades above your 2015 15" MacBook in performance already.

Granted, Windows compatibility is a big issue depending on her coursework, but... let's just say there are workarounds. For instance:

Anyway, I think these use cases are very edge cases. If your daughter can't get these apps to work on her MacBook, she could also just ask a friend who has a Windows computer to help her with these things.
Click to expand...

Based on the info I think all of these would work. We've been going over the classes but most the tech info just says to have access to a computer and all the IT help/faqs are free things like email and internet issues 🤦‍♂️
 
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Ay-Yo-Its-Edge said:
Real World heavy users/College M2 Air Users, this is more of a question for you.

Do you think that overall the 13.6" M2 Air with 8/10/16/512 will be enough to last through 5 years of college?

I'm not normally torn/undecided on what upgrades to get for myself as I know my workflow & needs. This isn't the case now as our daughter is preparing to move to New Zealand for college (Veterinary School) and we need to get her a new laptop that will last her as close to 5 years as possible (it's a 5 year course vs 8 in Merica). It's been more than a few years since I've been in a classroom and I'm not even sure what programs are used in Vet school let alone the system requirements that would be suggested/required. She wants portability and I've tried to push her into the MBP 14 but she's pretty adamant about having the lightest load to carry.

Storage isn't a concern as she can always use iCloud/external but I've never used the M1 or M2 air and my concern is with the GPU mainly. I will make sure her new computer has a minimal of 16GB Ram (8GB unified is still just 8GB) but do you think that overall the M2 Air with 8/10/16/512 will last 5 years of heavy use?

Again when it comes to what I need as a full time photographer I base upgrades/needs off my programs and I currently use an M1 Ultra 20/64/64/1TB studio and is in no way a comparison to the MBA. Thank you in advance for your insights and/or real world use advice.

Mahalo
Rob
Click to expand...
Five years is a long time in computer years at the MBA low end so I would normally suggest a loaded MBP including 32 or 64 GB RAM which is more likely to last 5 years. But the fact that she wants light says it all: get the MBA but boost the RAM to maximum, which I believe is 24 GB. The additional RAM will matter in a couple of years if not immediately. If for some reason her computing needs exceed the MBA at some point deal with it then.
 
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Ay-Yo-Its-Edge said:
Based on the info I think all of these would work. We've been going over the classes but most the tech info just says to have access to a computer and all the IT help/faqs are free things like email and internet issues 🤦‍♂️
Click to expand...
I think most software from college textbooks are moving into "The Cloud". If Safari doesn't work, then Google will.
 
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