MB Pro or MB Air?

[Loompy]

Hello folks!

First time Mac buyer here and was wondering how much of a difference there was between the 1499$ MBP and 1499$ MBA in terms of performance. I know the former has a better processor, but the latter has much faster SSD and so I was wondering will the speed of the SSD more or less cancel out any benefits of the faster processor in the MBP?

Also, are the possible i5 to i7, and 4GB to 8GB ram upgrades worth it on the air? I dont really see myself needing 8GB of ram as far as I know, but Im also hoping to get around 5 years of good use out of the laptop. Nothing more strenuous on the hardware than WoW and maybe Illustrator/Photoshop for photo drawing/editing.

 

[FrizzleFryBen]

Great question! Depends on what you want it for.

What do you want to use it for?

A few years ago I beat the hell out of my MBP with video renders and flash compiles. The MBA even with an i7 is slower than a MBP. If renders and compiles (from most apps) is your thing, I'd go with a MBP AND an SSD. If you are going to use it for web, docs and media consumption, I'd totally go with an Air. If you are more of a power user, I'd go with 8 GB and an i7. That's what I have now. I absolutely love it and I still do flash editing and compiles. From my point of view, the SSD makes all the difference in the world. Plus the newer intel HD4000 integrated graphics speeds things up considerably and consumes less energy than the last gen 3000.

From my point of view, one almost has to justify going with a MBP over an Air anymore. Plus you can cut a ribeye with it. How awesome is that!

Right now my MBA has 8 safari tabs open, 6 FireFox, 12 excel docs, 4 word docs, console, iTunes playing internet radio, mail with over 35K emails, FileMaker (4.7GB database), preview with god only knows, iCal, iChat, Addressbook, fetch, sophos, various VPN client, oh and photoshop...not a single hitch in it's giddy-up.

I ran my mouth so it's totally going to freeze up when I hit submit reply

 

[vmachiel]

The Air is awesome these days. If you have to choose an upgrade i'd go with the 8GB over the i7. The i7 doesn't do all that much, but 8 Gb is ram allows so much open at the same time, plus it increases the VRAM that the intel HD 4000 can use from 384 MB to 512 MB.