Is it worth waiting for Macbook Air update?

S

seraphi

macrumors newbie
Hello all,

i'll be going to new york on the 20th of may for a visit. i'm in the market for a portable computer. Without going into too much detail, i was wondering whether it would be wiser to wait for the macbook air updates and buy at a later time, or just buy one when i go to the US ?

Thanks for your opinions and advice.
 
seraphi said:
Hello all,

i'll be going to new york on the 20th of may for a visit. i'm in the market for a portable computer. Without going into too much detail, i was wondering whether it would be wiser to wait for the macbook air updates and buy at a later time, or just buy one when i go to the US ?

Thanks for your opinions and advice.
Click to expand...

Your inquiry is a common one here - whether to buy now or hold out for new. Frankly, the 2011 model Airs are great. I bought mine last August and have loved using it since then. It's light, fast and can do everything my old 15" mbp did - faster, in case I haven't mentioned it was fast.

The supposed new model will sport an improved (supposedly) graphics processor from Intel - but because I'm not a game player or graphic artist and I don't watch movies on my Air, I've never noticed that the Intel graphics chip in the '11 was lacking.

I say buy when you're in the country - it's possible that the new models will be released by then and it will be a win win for you. If not, I still recommend that you buy the '11 model and enjoy it.
 
Only you can really decide when you need a computer.

If you don't need it now, get it a couple of weeks before your trip (so you can set it up and make sure it works fine).

You could also look at what rumors are around when you're ready to buy and see if it might be worth waiting.
 
If you need, then buy...My 13" 256GB is an excellent machine, and I use it much more than my MBP now. As posted, if you are looking to play intensive games, or do high end video or photo work, then waiting for the refresh might make sense.

I do such work, but on my MBP and my iMac, so the GPU is not an issue for me either.
 
Ivy bridge is a 22nm chip, in basic terms putting one in the new Air in june(ish) is going to rock. Expect to see better battery life making the ultra portable more portable.
 
If you are in the market for a Macbook Air today, you should strongly consider the discounted refurb models.
 
at this point, there's so little information that it's hard to say.

The last MBA revision was August 2011. With Ivy only being rolled out earliest end of April, beginning of may, its a possibility we wont see a 2012 refresh till June / july / August. similar to last year.

If you can wait. why not. if you want a laptop today too? why not.

So far, The rumour mill is pretty weak on what we're expecting from the 2012 MBA's.

On the plate for sure is a bump to the Ivy Bridge CPU package. The performance increase I believe was anywhere from 10-20% overall and the same for GPU. though I haven't actually seen any benchmarks. The power consumption is much lower so battery life should be longer.

However, We have seen no rumour about any other upgrade. So right now you can only assume that the 2012's will be identical to the 2011's in every other aspect.
 
wow, i have to admit you all have been really helpful. thank you very much. i just thought i would let you know that i have decided that i will probably go for the updated version. mainly because of the ivy bridge upgrade and the fact that this will be my first macbook air, means that i would prefer to get the latest model. i already have a perfectly working macbook pro 17'', so theres no rush but it gets too hot so i thought the smaller one might be better.

Again thank you for all the advice.
 
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