MacBook Air 2020 question

[chrissmash]

Hi folks,

my trusty old MacBook Pro from 2009 has had it, going to replace it with a MacBook Air I think. I was going to get the base MacBook Air for general use, no major heavy work, maybe a little light Xcode and that’s it. Will the base MacBook Air be enough for that? I know it’s 8GB but £200 is a chunk of change.. would you recommend going quad core as a £100 upgrade?

Thanks,

chris

 

[Siriosys]

Hi folks,

my trusty old MacBook Pro from 2009 has had it, going to replace it with a MacBook Air I think. I was going to get the base MacBook Air for general use, no major heavy work, maybe a little light Xcode and that’s it. Will the base MacBook Air be enough for that? I know it’s 8GB but £200 is a chunk of change.. would you recommend going quad core as a £100 upgrade?

Thanks,

chris

Short Answer - Yes. Most definitely. 8Gb RAM is heaps, particularly with SSD's being so fast nowadays.

FWIW, I just received my new MBA 2020 i7/16Gb/512 this week. I use VMware and Parallels a lot and apart from anything with Chrome in it, the machine runs perfectly for my needs.

 

[chrissmash]

Thanks all think I’ll spend the extra £180 on 16GB RAM. What do you think about upgrading from dual core to quad?

 

[DiCaprioAngel]

I was thinking of getting the 2020 MacBook Air as a secondary device (primarily for watching Netflix using Netflix party with a friend who lives out of state and to transfer certain songs that are not available on the iTunes Store). My iPad Pro will be my primary device, I would just need a laptop for certain tasks that can’t be accomplished with an iPad. I did have a MacBook Pro late 2013 15” model, but it pretty much crapped out on me after the Catalina upgrade. It was an old device, so I kind of expected it to happen. I know I can buy an older model for cheaper for the usage that I will be utilizing this laptop for, but I’m also thinking of longevity as I would not want it to crap out on me too soon as I had the previous laptop for 6 years before it gave out. I’m still debating on whether or not it’s worth it.

 

[TorontoSS]

I was thinking of getting the 2020 MacBook Air as a secondary device (primarily for watching Netflix using Netflix party with a friend who lives out of state and to transfer certain songs that are not available on the iTunes Store). My iPad Pro will be my primary device, I would just need a laptop for certain tasks that can’t be accomplished with an iPad. I did have a MacBook Pro late 2013 15” model, but it pretty much crapped out on me after the Catalina upgrade. It was an old device, so I kind of expected it to happen. I know I can buy an older model for cheaper for the usage that I will be utilizing this laptop for, but I’m also thinking of longevity as I would not want it to crap out on me too soon as I had the previous laptop for 6 years before it gave out. I’m still debating on whether or not it’s worth it.

I'm sorry, this is unrelated - but what do you mean the computer crapped out? Did it stop functioning? I'm asking because I have a late 2013 13 inch MBP - it had 8gb ram and i5 chip. I've updated to Catalina and some features don't work. Such as side car for example. And it also made my MS Office redundant so had to spring in for Microsoft 365 but beyond that working great. Just out of curiosity wanted to know what happened to yours.

FWIW I ordered the Air - getting the i5/16gb/256. I think the i5/8/256 should be good for many including me. I don't know why I went for the extra ram. But I did.

 

[DiCaprioAngel]

I'm sorry, this is unrelated - but what do you mean the computer crapped out? Did it stop functioning? I'm asking because I have a late 2013 13 inch MBP - it had 8gb ram and i5 chip. I've updated to Catalina and some features don't work. Such as side car for example. And it also made my MS Office redundant so had to spring in for Microsoft 365 but beyond that working great. Just out of curiosity wanted to know what happened to yours.

FWIW I ordered the Air - getting the i5/16gb/256. I think the i5/8/256 should be good for many including me. I don't know why I went for the extra ram. But I did.

Around the time Catalina came out, my laptop started acting funny. Whenever I would turn it on and try to do anything - whether it browse the web, listen to music, watch a YouTube Video, write, etc, I would get the beach ball cursor and it would freeze, then it would turn off and power back on by itself and repeat. It would always do this, no matter what I did. I reset the PRAM, did all the tricks that I know to fix it, and nothing helped. I tried restoring it to factory settings and somehow there is no longer an operating system and when I DO try to install one, it always fails, so now my laptop is pretty much useless. I did make a thread on here a while ago and I tried all their tips with no luck. I tried just about everything to get it to work and nothing’s helped. I was going to take it to the Genius Bar to see if they could fix it, but then the virus came and everything is closed. I don’t even know if it’ll be worth it to fix it anymore.

 

[KPOM]

Thanks all think I’ll spend the extra £180 on 16GB RAM. What do you think about upgrading from dual core to quad?

I’d get the quad-core. Don’t worry about all the posts about the heat. The quad-core will give you a little more staying power assuming you plan to keep the 2020 Air as long as you kept your MacBook Pro.

 

[TorontoSS]

Around the time Catalina came out, my laptop started acting funny. Whenever I would turn it on and try to do anything - whether it browse the web, listen to music, watch a YouTube Video, write, etc, I would get the beach ball cursor and it would freeze, then it would turn off and power back on by itself and repeat. It would always do this, no matter what I did. I reset the PRAM, did all the tricks that I know to fix it, and nothing helped. I tried restoring it to factory settings and somehow there is no longer an operating system and when I DO try to install one, it always fails, so now my laptop is pretty much useless. I did make a thread on here a while ago and I tried all their tips with no luck. I tried just about everything to get it to work and nothing’s helped. I was going to take it to the Genius Bar to see if they could fix it, but then the virus came and everything is closed. I don’t even know if it’ll be worth it to fix it anymore.

Oh wow! That's definitely "crapped out". sorry that happened to your computer. it's a mixture of it being old and bad luck. it's not as if many of your tasks were super intensive.

mine's been working wonderfully. as I said, a few features are unavailable but generally it's been smooth.

 

[joeybuckets]

$100 for an upgrade to I5 is a NO BRAINER!!!!!!!!