MBA 11" Advice

[riley41090]

I'm currently trying to persuade myself that buying a Macbook Air on my student budget isn't completely ridiculous. I have a mid-2011 27" iMac and i absolutely love it, i just could really use something more portable so i go to the library and actually get some work done!

I had a 2008 MBP 15" with 2.93ghz processor and spent a small fortune on it, it was fantastic and was far more powerful that i need (as my 27" is) but with several tabs open browsing and listening to music used to hit painfully hot temperatures (100celcius+) and the heat issue put me off another laptop (after i spilled lemsip all over it!)

Basically, i have an obsession with buying Mac's that are too powerful for my needs, i am set on getting 8gb of RAM as i see my use as multitasking but not processor heavy (correct?) but choosing between the standard 1.7GHz i5 and the 2.0GHz i7 is the sticking point, would the i7 run hot? or is the heat problem less noticeable with these newer processors than the older Core 2 Duo?

Thanks for reading my ramblings!

 

[miles01110]

It's still going to run hot. It doesn't sound like you need a new computer anyways.

 

[palpatine]

I'm currently trying to persuade myself that buying a Macbook Air on my student budget isn't completely ridiculous. I have a mid-2011 27" iMac and i absolutely love it, i just could really use something more portable so i go to the library and actually get some work done!

I had a 2008 MBP 15" with 2.93ghz processor and spent a small fortune on it, it was fantastic and was far more powerful that i need (as my 27" is) but with several tabs open browsing and listening to music used to hit painfully hot temperatures (100celcius+) and the heat issue put me off another laptop (after i spilled lemsip all over it!)

Basically, i have an obsession with buying Mac's that are too powerful for my needs, i am set on getting 8gb of RAM as i see my use as multitasking but not processor heavy (correct?) but choosing between the standard 1.7GHz i5 and the 2.0GHz i7 is the sticking point, would the i7 run hot? or is the heat problem less noticeable with these newer processors than the older Core 2 Duo?

Thanks for reading my ramblings!

If it were me, I would rethink my needs, and take a look at my actual activity.

(1) Playing music while working on the computer is going to chew up lots of extra processor power and inevitably heat the thing up. Yesterday I did some mildly processor intensive tasks (including listening to a podcast) and my 2012 11" MBA got pretty toasty. Put your music into your iPhone/iPod, put on some nice headphones, and spare your computer and your neighbors the musical misery

(2) Borrow someone's computer and film yourself doing a day of "work." It sounds like you need to rethink how you structure your day. There are all sorts of methods (the Pomodero one is probably the easiest to immediately implement http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/). You might be amazed (I was when I did it) how much of your life you are wasting doing crap like posting on forums (hey, that's me!). Turn off the Internet, set a timer, and get stuff done. Once you have finished your work, then you can play

Anyhow, if you rethink your workflow, you might discover (as I did) that all I need is a lightly powered, tiny MBA. Getting stuff done rarely involves music, games, and web surfing