Going to be making my MBA purchase soon. Final questions

[lonewolf604]

It all comes down to 4 vs 8 gigs of ram.

The only app I see myself using heavily is Garageband (I'm an amateur musician), coupled with a bit of iMovie. I don't see myself upgrading to Logic, so will 8 gigs still be a "necessity", or a "no brainer?"

I intend to do some casual gaming too, like Counter-Strike Source, and other mid 2000's valve games, that's it.

I plan on upgrading in 2-3 years anyway.

 

[will waters]

I would get the extra ram, after all it is only an extra £80, which is cheap for apple, it will help as well with multiple apps and the system will always be able to find a use for it

Will

 

[lonewolf604]

Hmm...everyone seems to think that. I guess since I can also get a student discount it'll cost $10 less would make it an even better deal.

 

[Abazigal]

IMO, 4gb ram is just pushing it close. I find that on my imac, I average a little over 4gb ram of usage, but I suppose with ssd, you won't really notice the page outs.

Personally, for a laptop, I would try to go for 8gb ram whenever possible, but hold off the SSD upgrades (which I find Apple really charges an arm and a leg for), relying on portable drives for external storage.

 

[skuid87]

Go for the upgrade.

For me it's simple. It's not a huge additional cost (relative to what you're already paying for the MBA) and it can't be upgraded later.

It'll only increase the longevity and the long term resale value.

 

[lukekarts]

My usage is fairly similar to yours, I do the odd bit on iMovie, plus a few Valve games and others (Minecraft, WoW). Don't find RAM to ever be an issue, unless I try to do other stuff whilst editing in iMovie (I suspect the processor impedes that a little too).

For what its worth, I'm on a 2011 MBA 13 i5.

So the extra RAM is up to you... maybe once a month you'll benefit from it, so it really depends if you're tight on cash or what else you might do with the money.

If you plan on replacing in 2-3 years, then future proofing is not a concern.

 

[\-V-/]

Get the 8 GB. Very cheap upgrade from Apple considering their past pricing schemes.

 

[Abazigal]

Go for the upgrade.

For me it's simple. It's not a huge additional cost (relative to what you're already paying for the MBA) and it can't be upgraded later.

It'll only increase the longevity and the long term resale value.

If anything, I think any extra money you get out of reselling the upgraded version in the future is likely to be less than the extra you shell out for the ram today. An analysis by another thread concludes that to preserve resale value, just go for the stock version sans upgrades (which are inflated by industry standards).

Reason being, Apple is only going to continue releasing upgraded specs on their future MBA line. For all we know, 8gb ram will be standard for all airs in 1-2 years time.

Software spec requirements seem to more or less have bottomed out. If you don't need 8gb ram today, you probably won't need it a few years down the road either.

However, the ram is still not that expensive, so I would just say to heck and buy it.

 

[HenryHealy]

I'm the same. I'm getting the extra RAM because you can't upgrade it later and it's not that expensive.

 

[Stingray454]

The memory is absolutely the best upgrade to make. For only $100:ish (not really sure what the cost is now) you get _double_ RAM. I've used a 2010 Air with 4Mb, and it's quite easy to get it to start swapping, and with ML on the horizon you might need even more memory in the near future. With 8GB I don't feel limited on how many files / programs I can run in parallel anymore, before I used to manage my open files a bit to keep the computer operating fast. Of all the upgrades the 8Gb ram option is the one I'm happiest about, and I'd recommend anyone getting and Air to buy that.

 

[Apple...]

As the rest have already been saying, go with the 8GB upgrade. It's a no-brainer.

 

[mattopotamus]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1397470/