Going to be in college this fall and am going to get a macbook air, would you all recommend the 256gb over the 128? Do any of you know how much space is already taken up by the os?
Mountain Lion takes 8 gigabyte.
Buying a premium priced premium product - that's your plan. You shouldn't decrease it's usability by crippling the discspace, in my humble opinion.
If its your primary machine - go for more storage.
If its a secondary machine - go for less storage.
But to be honest it all depends on how you will be using it. Are you doing a photograhy course, or a writing course, for example? the answer will influence how much storage you should choose.
Then again, Im one to talk! My MBA is a secondary machine (will be getting a rMBP when updated), yet I still wentf or 256GB storage! lol
256 without a doubt. Once you see how useful it is you will load it with all kind of goodies. At least that happened to me. I now run out of space on my 768 Gb rMBP...
256. General rule of thumb for hardware, REGARDLESS of the operating system, buy as large a capacity as you can afford. You'll quickly fill up 128g, somewhat less so with 256g.
Going to be in college this fall and am going to get a macbook air, would you all recommend the 256gb over the 128? Do any of you know how much space is already taken up by the os?
This depends entirely on how you plan to use the machine. A default install with the OS and iLife with iWorks apps uses up about 20GB, so if you can comfortably fit all your data in the remaining 100GB, then 128GB is all you need.
My advice to the OP is if you want to get through college with this laptop (hopefully no more than 5 years, 4 if you're lucky.) is to get both the 8 GB mem and 256 GB storage upgrades. Finance it if you have to using the 18m interest free financing offered via Apple (Also a great way, and time, to establish good credit history).