MacBook Air 13" configuration advice please

[sofianito]

Show me where I said it wouldn't work with 4GB of RAM? Please.

I said you want as much as possible. Nothing more, nothing less.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I thought you were saying 4GB is not enough for PS .

FWIW, I tested Mavericks on my late 2007 MBP, and running just Safari with few tabs and Maps ate more than 2GB of RAM... Anyway, I might upgrade my wife's MBA to 8GB so she could run smoothly several medium to heavy applications at the same time...

 

[ItHurtsWhenIP]

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I thought you were saying 4GB is not enough for PS .

FWIW, I tested Mavericks on my late 2007 MBP, and running just Safari with few tabs and Maps ate more than 2GB of RAM... Anyway, I might upgrade my wife's MBA to 8GB so she could run smoothly several medium to heavy applications at the same time...

No worries. I didn't want it to sound like I know exactly what someone needs or doesn't, I just think it's safe to say that the more RAM the better, no matter the situation.

 

[Boyd01]

In order to contrast your statements with those who stated above that PS run without issues on a haswell MBA with 4GB

Just to be clear, in my post above where I suggested that 4GB would be plenty of memory, I was replying to the OP (LxHunter) and not your post. He said his main use was MS Office and he didn't do anything heavy with graphics.

Nevertheless, I had no problems running my old version of Photoshop (CS3) as well as my old version of Final Cut Pro on my 2011 i5/4gb MBA. I am now running the same programs on a 2013 i7/8gb MBA and don't notice much difference except the video rendering is faster.

Maybe newer versions of these programs would show a bigger performance difference with the additional RAM? I have no immediate plans to upgrade them because the old software still meets my needs. And they run a LOT faster on the MBA than they did on my 2008 15" MBP.

 

[hindmost]

It sounds like that should be great for her. You might be tight on space if you load a bunch of movies on it though, besides that it sounds great.

I agree with your recommendations. Indeed, my daughter is into amateur photography and has over 25,000 pics in iPhoto. The 256 Solid State Drive i installed on her MacBook Pro was using about 200 gig already. Plus, SSD maintenance recommendations seem to agree that between 10 and 20 gig be left open to have slosh room for the SSD to do it's stuff for file management.

Result? I recently bought a 2013 Macbook Air to replace her MacBook Pro and I opted for a i5/8/512 configuration. Yup, a 512 SSD is a bit of overkill but it sure leaves breathing room for movies and photography items.

I think it defeats the whole Macbook Air concept of mobility to have to worry about lugging external drives, or dingles, dangles or dongles to store files.

 

[AXs]

Order of priority imo (that many seem to agree with):

1) RAM
2) SSD
3) CPU

I think 256Gb is the sweet spot, you're going to have about half of that for media files.
I think paying $300 extra for additional 256GB to get to 512GB is NOT worth the bang of the buck. The advantage of SSD is read-write speeds. This is great for boot, app work, software work, music/photo/video editing... but playing media files won't be different from a 5 year old laptop with an old spinning drive.

My advise would be to use that $300 extra to get a Time Capsule 2TB. You're getting 2048GB extra space in comparison to 256GB space - And AC wireless speeds along with it which really makes the most of your Air's fastest wireless speeds in the market.

The idea is to plug in the Air as less as possible.

Hell, based on your basic work usage - you would probably even be fine with 128GB as long as you don't install VM.

Goodluck.

 

[imjoee]

I borrowed 11" MacBook Air from the office.
I like it so much I want to buy a 13"

I know that 128GB is enough
Should I pay for these"
1.3GHz to 1.7GHz $150
4GB to 8GB $100

My work is financial/Business
Word for business plans
Excel for spreadsheets
OmniGraffle and OmniPlan sometimes.
Nothing graphic heavy

I wouldn't upgrade at all if you intend to sell it in a year or 2.

 

[jadAce]

Order of priority imo (that many seem to agree with):

1) RAM
2) SSD
3) CPU

I think 256Gb is the sweet spot, you're going to have about half of that for media files.
I think paying $300 extra for additional 256GB to get to 512GB is NOT worth the bang of the buck. The advantage of SSD is read-write speeds. This is great for boot, app work, software work, music/photo/video editing... but playing media files won't be different from a 5 year old laptop with an old spinning drive.

My advise would be to use that $300 extra to get a Time Capsule 2TB. You're getting 2048GB extra space in comparison to 256GB space - And AC wireless speeds along with it which really makes the most of your Air's fastest wireless speeds in the market.

The idea is to plug in the Air as less as possible.

Hell, based on your basic work usage - you would probably even be fine with 128GB as long as you don't install VM.

Goodluck.

+1

Time Capsule is a worthwhile investment over the 512 GB upgrade. SSD's (at this point in time) are meant to be kind of "light" in terms of storage and speed.

 

[LxHunter]

Thanks for all your advice and input

I opened a number of my larger files :Word, Excel, KeyNote, PowerPoint.
Plus I have the usual apps open like: Mail, Safari, Calendar, Contacts, OmniFocus, DayOne etc.

Looks like the Page Ins/Page Outs is OK - on MBA 11" i5 4GB 128GB

Still, I will follow your advice and go for 8GB - not much expense $100 to upgrade. And stay with the i5 for battery performance.

PS: I realy notice the SSD is way faster than the HD on my iMac

 

[sofianito]

Thanks for all your advice and input

I opened a number of my larger files :Word, Excel, KeyNote, PowerPoint.
Plus I have the usual apps open like: Mail, Safari, Calendar, Contacts, OmniFocus, DayOne etc.

Looks like the Page Ins/Page Outs is OK - on MBA 11" i5 4GB 128GB

Still, I will follow your advice and go for 8GB - not much expense $100 to upgrade. And stay with the i5 for battery performance.

I notice that the SSD is way faster than the HD on my iMac

By the way, sorry for hijacking your thread . It had a generic name so I thought it'd be easier to post here than to create a duplicate thread...