MB Air enough horsepower?

[WRP]

A little background. I am a video editor and motion graphics artist. I used to bring my MBP to clients offices for quick work but now I have no need to do that. For the last couple of years I have done all my work on my MP.

So now, my laptop has been relegated to being used for email, web surfing, RAW photo editing, Photoshop and the occasional launching of After Effects (this one only a couple times a year if that).

Seriously, I am using a pre-unibody 2.4 C2D MBP and it is just now starting to get long in the tooth. I assume a machine 5 years newer will smoke this thing even if it is a "lesser" model. Will an Air be able to do what I ask of it? I haven't touched one since the very first version (which sucked) and I know they made leaps and bounds, but how capable are they?

Thanks!

 

[tredstone]

If geekbench is the metric for comparison, a 2012 13" MBA is faster than any Macbook Pro model from 2010 or earlier, and is about on par with a quad-core 2008 Mac Pro.

 

[Calot]

Max it out (except the 512 gb ssd which is a pointless 500 dollar upgrade) and you got yourself a very capable little machine.

For reference, I can play Half-Life 2 on almost max settings at native resolution at a constant 60 fps on a i7 8Gb 256gb.

 

[filmbuff]

There is no need to get the i7 processor, the stock Air will smoke your current laptop. It is great for photoshop and RAW editing, and I've done video editing in Sony Vegas with no problems. DO get the 8gb RAM upgrade because that gets you more RAM and 512MB of video memory which makes a big difference in any type of graphics work.

 

[ZBoater]

?.Will an Air be able to do what I ask of it?...

Oh yes.

 

[mrsir2009]

Any of the new MacBook Air models will smoke your current laptop

 

[WRP]

Thanks all. That's what I assumed. My DP G5 got smoked by my lappy when I got it and I keep things for a long time. Hell, my mini 3 years ago smoked my DP G5.

I just wanted to be sure as back then I needed the heavy hitter and nowadays, hardware is so far ahead and I don't need crazy rendering power ill be good with a small light Air!

 

[tredstone]

Let us know what you get and what your experience is with it