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Few ? on Air

V

virgomac

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 10, 2008
91
0
Question:

I am soon going to be buying a laptop, and I'm looking at the Macbook and Macbook Air. While a Pro would be ideal and quite tasty, I"ll never be using it to its full, I'm mostly looking for sheer portability and "average" application use.

Question i have is what is the real difference , noticeable or otherw
ise from the PATA hard drive vs the SSD drive?

I think that in general use the AIR would be ok, since my current laptop uses a 1.6 dual core 2 gigs of ram and integrated crap card for graphics. I shouldn't see a decrease in performance should I, I'd assume it would be at the very minimum the "same".
 
portability, CD/DVD-less, compact, and simple. then go with the Air
however note that it cannot use CDs or DVDs your going to have to buy a usb superdrive for it. or rip it from another computer and transfer it to the air

i have a macbook (white) and i love it! dont get the 2.1ghz tho, you wont be able to burn dvds LOL thats what happend to me..
 
Difference between the SSD and HDD? Not much, but the SSDs are going to be less prone to mechanical failure/malfunction because they don't require spinning a disk at crazy speeds to get data off the hard-disk.

I don't think you're going to notice much difference in speed between your old laptop, and an MBA. It really depends on whether your current laptop has a Core 2 Duo, or the older Core Duo. The Core 2 Duo was found to be a lot faster than the Core Duo at the same clock speed (tested on MacBooks at notebookreview.com).

Why don't you just sell the old one (which isn't really that slow), and buy a faster Unless your other laptop has a 17" screen, a 13" MBA isn't going to be a huge improvement in size, only in weight. :confused:

I guess if you have a 17" laptop of some sort, an MBA is worth having. Otherwise, I don't see the point of buying an MBA. You may never use your old laptop again if you buy an MBA, as the older one doesn't offer you better performance or anything.

Have you considered a netbook?
 
Well, don't forget it could be the even older Pentium D Dual-core, or Pentium M dual-core. I personally wouldn't recommend netbooks. The screen is quite small and you might have to strain after a bit. However, if you absolutely MUST have one, I recommend HP's one.
 
^^^Well that's why laptops like the MBA exist. Some people simply cannot use smaller keyboards and screens.

On the other hand, do you recommend that he have 2 laptops with similar screen size, specs, and near-identical speed?

Unless your other laptop is a 15" Dell brick that's 1.5" thick and 8 lbs or something, the money he's willing to spend on the MBA could be spent on a better, single laptop that's somewhere between the MBA, and his old laptop in terms of size, and yet offer much more than both systems in terms of performance.

It's a suggestion, but you're right. Some people aren't comfortable with a 9" screen, and I can't blame them.
 
Are you saying that Mac OS isn't 10 times faster than Windows?:p And we don't know his screen size yet. Also, we don't know what processor family his 1.6GHz is in
 
6 month Macbook Air owner...

I came from a Macbook Pro 2.33C2D. The MBA has been a joy to own. Sometimes I'm doing some work in Aperture and need to pause for a moment and realize I'm supposed to be on a 30% slower computer!

The portability can't be appreciated until you've owned it for a few weeks. From typing with one hand and holding it with the other to pinching it between just two fingers because your hands are full; you will be impressed.

I have had to change my habits to accommodate for the 80GB HDD. Most my videos are stored on Time Capsule.

I did NOT get the SSD for the simply reason that months later I could go aftermarket for $200. I have my eye on the Toshiba 120GB for Christmas time. Best part? The Air is plug-in-play with an SSD (the logic board recognizes it no problems).
 
Sorry its taken me so long to reply back to all your very helpful responses.

In answer to some of your questions my current notebook is a compaq presario c700. I believe its a 15" screen with a Core Duo, NOT a Core 2 Duo.

I already have a buyer for it so I won't end up with 2 notebooks.

I have already put in an order for a 24" Imac for my desktop replacement, so now its just a choice of the 1.6 Air....or getting the low end macbook once the refresh hits next month.

Still undecided really, macbook would have more oomph, but the Air would most certainly satisfy my portability needs.
 
Unless you really need it now, I'd advise you to wait. If they change something in either MB or MBA (after all we can't be truly certain anything is going to happen...), the situation will change. You might either get a newer model for the (supposedly) same price, or if you don't care for an upgraded one, maybe you'll manage to buy older one for less.

Also, Air will likely be faster than you current notebook, but slower than your new iMac (although I don't know how much noticeable it's going to be on light usage).
 
virgomac said:
Sorry its taken me so long to reply back to all your very helpful responses.

In answer to some of your questions my current notebook is a compaq presario c700. I believe its a 15" screen with a Core Duo, NOT a Core 2 Duo.

I already have a buyer for it so I won't end up with 2 notebooks.

I have already put in an order for a 24" Imac for my desktop replacement, so now its just a choice of the 1.6 Air....or getting the low end macbook once the refresh hits next month.

Still undecided really, macbook would have more oomph, but the Air would most certainly satisfy my portability needs.
Click to expand...

With iMac onboard to handle your desktop needs whats the point of the MB if you can get the Air? The Air serves a very distinct purpose in that its so light and portable...with the iMac as your hub they'll work together as a team. If you didn't have the iMac I'd say go w/ the MB...as it is they'd almost be competing to do the same job.
 
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