Macbook Air for High School t & Music Hobby?

[celebrityoasis]

I'm looking at getting a Mac for my final year of high school. I'll be using it for email, the web and school work (reports, essays, presentations) but I'd also like it to experiment with music next year and put Ableton Live on it as well.

I'm looking at the 13" Macbook Air with 128 GB SSD and I'd bump up the RAM to 4 GB. However, I would likely wait until the next refresh to purchase.

Would the Air be able to handle my needs or should I be looking at other models? I should note that I would not be using any hardware inputs to create music - just plug-ins.

This post seems to suggest that it is a suitable laptop for audio programs.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Fishrrman]

"I'm looking at getting a Mac for my final year of high school. I'll be using it for email, the web and school work (reports, essays, presentations) but I'd also like it to experiment with music next year and put Ableton Live on it as well.
I'm looking at the 13" Macbook Air with 128 GB SSD and I'd bump up the RAM to 4 GB. However, I would likely wait until the next refresh to purchase."

For music work, I'd suggest a 13" MacBook Pro as a better choice than a MacBook Air.

More disk storage space (you're going to use this up QUICKLY in music production), the 4gb of RAM comes standard, a firewire port (used by many audio interfaces), and the DVD/CD drive.

Yes, it weighs more, but the extra connectivity and in/out options make the extra weight worth having.

 

[Young Spade]

I'd agree with Finn; the MBA would be great (and perfectly fine I'm assuming) to do what you want to do with it. The CPU is "ok" and the increased RAM will help in keeping things speedy, however you have a SSD and those don't come cheap nor carry a large capacity.

For the same price *checks* you can get the MBP which will give you all of the things the Air has to offer and more, including a longer battery life and backlit keyboard.

If I were you and I could wait, I'd wait and see what they did when they refresh the Airs later this year. If you still want to go that route you could and just pick up some external harddrives for "cheap". (1TB for under 100 bucks is what I'm seeing now).

 

[chrismacguy]

I'd agree with Finn; the MBA would be great (and perfectly fine I'm assuming) to do what you want to do with it. The CPU is "ok" and the increased RAM will help in keeping things speedy, however you have a SSD and those don't come cheap nor carry a large capacity.

For the same price *checks* you can get the MBP which will give you all of the things the Air has to offer and more, including a longer battery life and backlit keyboard.

If I were you and I could wait, I'd wait and see what they did when they refresh the Airs later this year. If you still want to go that route you could and just pick up some external harddrives for "cheap". (1TB for under 100 bucks is what I'm seeing now).

Unless they find a miraculous way of adding FireWire 800, I would go with the MBP (Yes Thunderbolt might be there, but it will take 5-6 years for that to permeate the market enough to make it worthwhile) - just for interfaces etc. Music recording is the one thing I keep my White MacBook with FireWire around for - everything else my Air is great, but Id still take a MacBook with FireWire for audio.

 

[CFoss]

I would suggest the MacBook Pro. While the MacBook Air is great for most the things you have mentioned, the CPU will really hold you back. I use a Mac Pro with a 2.8 GHz Quad-Core, and I'm considering upgrading to the i7 Quad-Core MBP due to the consistent overloads I have while using Logic Pro.

Either way, enjoy your MacBook, whatever you decide to go with.