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Mac Experts Please Help Me!

S

Sneakerp

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 10, 2012
125
35
Hi Everyone,

I'm going to purchase the new MacBook Air 13-inch : 128GB, but have some questions.

Usage: 80-90% of the MacBooks use will be for surfing the web and managing my iTunes w/ iPhone. My iTunes has about 60 GB of songs housed in an external hard drive.

Concern: When I surf the web, I tend to open about 8-10 tabs while running my iTunes. The thing I have experienced with PCs is they freeze up or lag when I try to do to much stuff, to quickly. Then I get the programs are not responding error.

Question:
To avoid freezing/lag and having programs not respond, do I need to upgrade my processor to 1.7 (1.3 Standard) or Ram to 8 GB (4 GB standard)

Thanks for your help!!! :)
 
Sneakerp said:
Hi Everyone,

I'm going to purchase the new MacBook Air 13-inch : 128GB, but have some questions.

Usage: 80-90% of the MacBooks use will be for surfing the web and managing my iTunes w/ iPhone. My iTunes has about 60 GB of songs housed in an external hard drive.

Concern: When I surf the web, I tend to open about 8-10 tabs while running my iTunes. The thing I have experienced with PCs is they freeze up or lag when I try to do to much stuff, to quickly. Then I get the programs are not responding error.

Question:
To avoid freezing/lag and having programs not respond, do I need to upgrade my processor to 1.7 (1.3 Standard) or Ram to 8 GB (4 GB standard)

Thanks for your help!!! :)
Click to expand...

hi there - the short answer is no, probably not - but it depends what those tabs are.

if it's 8-10 tabs of mostly text like this website then you should be fine. if you're making the computer work harder then you might see some slow down. the good news is you can just pop into a mac store and try exactly what you describe! go open a bunch of tabs...youtube, espn, cnn, wiki etc and then open up itunes and see how far you have to push it before you notice a slow down.

for what it's worth if i were going to upgrade your system i would do it in the following order: hard drive space, RAM then CPU. if you really dont think you need more disk space then maybe consider the ram first...it's only $100 and less if you can get a student discount. i personally would go for the 256 drive, but that fits my needs better.

Ádh mór ort!
 
I was wondering about that myself too.

I'm currently in the process of making up my mind on whether I should get the 13" MacBook Air base model with 8GB RAM or just 4GB with 256 SSD or just the base model without any additions.

Is the extra $200 worth it for the 256 SSD if I'm getting an HDD for back-up anyways?
 
DisplacedMic said:
hi there - the short answer is no, probably not - but it depends what those tabs are.

if it's 8-10 tabs of mostly text like this website then you should be fine. if you're making the computer work harder then you might see some slow down. the good news is you can just pop into a mac store and try exactly what you describe! go open a bunch of tabs...youtube, espn, cnn, wiki etc and then open up itunes and see how far you have to push it before you notice a slow down.

for what it's worth if i were going to upgrade your system i would do it in the following order: hard drive space, RAM then CPU. if you really dont think you need more disk space then maybe consider the ram first...it's only $100 and less if you can get a student discount. i personally would go for the 256 drive, but that fits my needs better.

Ádh mór ort!
Click to expand...

It's 8-10 tabs of blogs, online shopping, and music/video sites. Great idea. I'll go to a local Mac Store and try to max out the notebook.

I don't think I need more disk space as I will be using a HDD to store everything, about 70 GB of music and photos.
 
DisplacedMic said:
for what it's worth if i were going to upgrade your system i would do it in the following order: hard drive space, RAM then CPU. if you really dont think you need more disk space then maybe consider the ram first...it's only $100 and less if you can get a student discount. i personally would go for the 256 drive, but that fits my needs better.
Click to expand...

Solid advice. I would consider storage and memory before the processor upgrade, however with your particular question you might prioritize memory before storage. If nothing else you can more than likely upgrade the storage down the road, either through third party SSDs (OWC has some offerings for prior generations) or other storage solutions. RAM though is built into the logic board, theres no reasonable way to upgrade it down the road.
 
Mr Rabbit said:
Solid advice. I would consider storage and memory before the processor upgrade, however with your particular question you might prioritize memory before storage. If nothing else you can more than likely upgrade the storage down the road, either through third party SSDs (OWC has some offerings for prior generations) or other storage solutions. RAM though is built into the logic board, theres no reasonable way to upgrade it down the road.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Seems like the general consensus is upgrade RAM if I don't need more storage, which I don't.
 
Shadow-Man4 said:
I was wondering about that myself too.

I'm currently in the process of making up my mind on whether I should get the 13" MacBook Air base model with 8GB RAM or just 4GB with 256 SSD or just the base model without any additions.

Is the extra $200 worth it for the 256 SSD if I'm getting an HDD for back-up anyways?
Click to expand...

Depends on what you do, i do not have a itunes library and iphoto library, i do have Diablo 3 on it but with all my docs and stuff i still manage to fill up 110GB of space on my 256GB SSD, so 128GB is for me manageable but rather have too much than just enough.

The ideal sweet spot for the air is since the 2012 model i5/8GB and 256GB SSD.

256GB SSD for storage, cause that grows on you
8GB memory for future proofing it
i5, just its not worth for that 10% extra CPU power when you just browse the web and such.

:confused:
 
One word: Spotify :) smth like 10 USD per month and all music you would ever want with offline etc
 
mbafan said:
One word: Spotify :) smth like 10 USD per month and all music you would ever want with offline etc
Click to expand...

I have spotify and take advantage of the service when it comes to new albums, but Spotify doesn't have every song or songs from unknown artists.
 
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