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MacBook Air 2012 - Base model, help!

A

Atlast3000

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 29, 2009
7
0
Hi all, thanks for reading.
I find myself in a bit of a pickle. I'm a poor student who's ready to purchase a new MacBook, and I want to save as much as possible.
Now that the new MBA have 4GB of RAM standard, I was wondering if the base model is worth considering. I plan to store most of my pics/videos on an external USB drive (3.0 transfer speeds!), making me strongly consider that 64GB of storage is adequate for everyday use (I know it's really like 50GB after Lion). What say you? Is the SSD upgradable down the line if I desire? Has anyone made do with the 64GB in the past and can share experiences? Thanks!
 
Atlast3000 said:
Hi all, thanks for reading.
I find myself in a bit of a pickle. I'm a poor student who's ready to purchase a new MacBook, and I want to save as much as possible.
Now that the new MBA have 4GB of RAM standard, I was wondering if the base model is worth considering. I plan to store most of my pics/videos on an external USB drive (3.0 transfer speeds!), making me strongly consider that 64GB of storage is adequate for everyday use (I know it's really like 50GB after Lion). What say you? Is the SSD upgradable down the line if I desire? Has anyone made do with the 64GB in the past and can share experiences? Thanks!
Click to expand...

The SSD is (or will be) up-gradable, but it won't be cheap. Depends really on how much other media (movies, music etc.) you have as those typically take up the most space
 
64gb is really not much in today's world. I'd personally not take a chance on having such a small amount of storage. For only a 100 dollars more you can get the 128gb model - and that's at retail. Being a student you're eligible for the student pricing.
 
basesloaded190 said:
The SSD is (or will be) up-gradable, but it won't be cheap. Depends really on how much other media (movies, music etc.) you have as those typically take up the most space
Click to expand...

The SSD is not upgradable in an air.. But I agree, get the 128 and use external drives for big storage.

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maflynn said:
64gb is really not much in today's world. I'd personally not take a chance on having such a small amount of storage. For only a 100 dollars more you can get the 128gb model - and that's at retail. Being a student you're eligible for the student pricing.
Click to expand...

Which is $50 off for an Air.
 
I have been making it with 64 GB for about a year now. It does feel slightly cramped but it's doable for me. I have about 10 GB of music, 5 GB photos, 5 GB of videos. I'd say if you have a large media collection go with the 128 GB. Using USB drives is possible but I think it would be annoying to have to carry around something extra.
 
The SDD on the new Air is NOT upgradeable as yet. It has a different connection than the previous Airs. (See iFixit's teardown.) I'm sure OWC and others will make upgrades in the future. Regardless, I would get the 128GB as well.

Something else to ponder though: What will you be using the Air for? Instead of paying $100 more for 128GB SSD, you might want to spend that $100 on upgrading to 8GB RAM...
 
the 64 is fine for most people, if you carefully manage your data, make liberal use of the cloud (google drive and dropbox), and use external drives (as you plan to do).

i bought 128 because one application i use only saves data to the local drive and i could not put it anywhere else. if not for that, i would have gorten 64. the extra 64 costs 10% of the device. it is a lot of money for something you don't need.

8gb ram is another popular, but unnecessary upgrade for most people. i find 4gb to be plenty.
 
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