Late 2010 13 Macbook Air - Upgrade

[GDF]

I was thinking of upgrading from my late 2010 13 Macbook Air 4gb Ram, 128 SSD to the current ones with 8 GB Ram and 256 SSD or to a 13 Macbook Pro Retina with 16 GB and 256 SSD.

Laptop has performed great, but I am running out of storage and battery will probably not last much longer. Also was thinking of just upgrading the SSD drive to a larger Transcend one and getting a new macbook air battery.

Laptop is used for basic word processing, basic spreadsheets, photo editing and internet browsing.

Appreciate any recommendations. Thanks!

 

[Meister]

Your budget?
What app do you use for photo editing?

 

[ckeck]

13" MBA easily. With the state of integrated GPUs and similar dual-core procs, I simply don't see the value in the 13" rMBP (IMHO).

A lot of CPU/GPU cycles on the retina MBPs get eaten up pushing all those extra pixels and while nice, the performance trade-off isn't worth it. MAYBE on the 15" if you really need a quad-core proc for something, but the 13 really just doesn't make sense.

Part of the issue is that the default 'best for retina' resolution on the 13 is even lower than the 13" MBA, which is already very low. Sure you can scale, but when you do, the screen lag/jitter still exists (how/why, I don't know, but it does). And the scaled resolutions don't look nearly as nice as the default retina res.

I've tried both the 2013 and new 2014 versions of the retina MBPs just to be sure. Maybe next-gen, but right now, I'd personally recommend the MBA without hesitation.

Had a loaded 15" MBP since 2006 when first introduced. Tried a MBA for the first time in 2012 and how have a loaded 2013 MBA. Best laptop I've ever used...even though the GPU isn't strong enough to do anything gaming related (or very little). Can't get myself to give it up.

 

[FuNGi]

I was thinking of upgrading from my late 2010 13 Macbook Air 4gb Ram, 128 SSD to the current ones with 8 GB Ram and 256 SSD or to a 13 Macbook Pro Retina with 16 GB and 256 SSD.

Laptop has performed great, but I am running out of storage and battery will probably not last much longer. Also was thinking of just upgrading the SSD drive to a larger Transcend one and getting a new macbook air battery.

Laptop is used for basic word processing, basic spreadsheets, photo editing and internet browsing.

Appreciate any recommendations. Thanks!

I went with the Transcend 500GB drive when faced with this exact dilemma. It was made easier in that I have a 15" rMBP from work to use when not traveling etc. If your late 2010 MBA does what you need now then I suggest upgrading and getting another 2 years out of it. You have a collectors item!