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MBA 11" - i7 vs. i5 - price difference worth the performance boost?

nebulos said:
a loose analogy:

if the i5 is a car with top speed 100mph,
the i7 is a car with top speed 120mph.

the question is: how often do you drive at these speeds?
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Thing is, there are no police on this super highway ;)

So If my car could do 120 MPH, I would not be posting, cuz I'd be driving......woooosh :D
 
archangelg said:
1) the i5 'train' which can take you from point A to point B in C amount of time at Y amount of cost?

OR

2) the i7 'train' which can take you from point A to point B in C/D time (D = how much faster i7 is vs. i5) at Y+Z amount of cost (Z = the extra amount)?
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now that was helpful. thanks.


KPOM said:
The difference is that there is no "speed limit" on a CPU task.
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the car analogy works without assuming speed limits. either way, you're not going to drive to the grocery store at 100 mph. you have to make turns, stop for other traffic, not run over old ladies, ...


KPOM said:
Whether your trip to the grocery store takes 6 minutes or 5 minutes may not matter so much, but would you rather your cross-country flight take 6 hours or 5 hours?
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that's exactly my point. how often do you take a cross country flight? only those that push the CPU on a regular basis, (as has already been said), are likely to reap a real benefit.
 
nebulos said:
that's exactly my point. how often do you take a cross country flight? only those that push the CPU on a regular basis, (as has already been said), are likely to reap a real benefit.
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Yes, but if you are going across the country, might you be willing to pay $150 extra for a non-stop flight rather than making a connection?
 
KPOM said:
Yes, but if you are going across the country, might you be willing to pay $150 extra for a non-stop flight rather than making a connection?
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that's easy: hell no!

but i like to get a break in during a long trip.

to stick with the analogy, if you travel a lot, and were offered a deal on an 'always sit first class' annual pass for like $500, it might be worth it. but if you're only gonna use it for thanksgiving and christmas, it's probably not worth it.

to get back to the point, i'm with the "i5 for all but video/audio producers" school. there's nothing wrong with going i7 either way, but of course you can buy yourself a nice external drive for that much, or a nice set of speakers, or ...
 
nebulos said:
now that was helpful. thanks.

Sorry, I was being a little silly. In any case, as it is with most things, different aspects matter to different people. I feel it may be worth the price boost (after some consideration) but it seems you think otherwise.

And with a young kid in tow, direct flight is MUCH more preferable though not always available. (I'd be a little surprised to hear other parents of small children on this forum with a different opinion...)
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Tell you what I think, the majority of people going for the i7 option are buying to have the i7 and dont realistically have any need for the additional performance, frankly there is nothing wrong with this, and for many it adds to the enjoyment of owning the machine.
 
Queen6 said:
Tell you what I think, the majority of people going for the i7 option are buying to have the i7 and dont realistically have any need for the additional performance, frankly there is nothing wrong with this, and for many it adds to the enjoyment of owning the machine.
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I think this is probably true for some people. I have a 2010 11" ultimate, and for days now have been seriously considering a 2011 11" i7, coz there is a better machine "out there" But that upgrade would have a true cost of about £800, which would be a ludicrous amount for me.

But I can't stop thinking about it... :confused:
 
KPOM said:
The i7 would make the biggest difference in running Windows 7 in Parallels. Even there, however, the i5 would be able to handle it. My 2010 MacBook Air was good enough with the SSD to handle running Quicken in Windows (my main reason for keeping Windows 7 on it). With the i7 version it is even better, but the i5 would have been very good, as well.

If it comes down to $200 difference, I'd probably stick with the i5.
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Until you reminded me in the quoted post, I had forgotten that we both ran Windows 7 on our MBAs so that we could have a platform for Quicken for Windows. I have been so happy with the job my 2010 MBA does running Quicken plus a bunch of other Windows and OS X apps simultaneously, I decided to save my money and pass over the 2011 MBA refresh.

As you noted, the new MBA's i5 chip should be more than adequate for virtually any task that is thrown at it. Further, the conventional wisdom has long been that a difference in the speeds of two chips is virtually unnoticeable in real world use until the speed of one chip approaches being twice as fast as the other. I would advise the OP to buy the i5 MBA from Amazon. I suggest that he will never miss the somewhat greater speed of the i7 chip and will save $200 in the bargain. What's not to like.:)
 
people bring up a good point: there is a noticeable difference between the i5 and i7 for many every day users, a psychological one.
 
Update: after putting in my purchase on Macconnection.com, I noticed it was backordered but I was fine w/ that. However, the power of this forum is not to be denied as well as the influence of the Apple gods.

Further conversation about the choices on this thread, my own conversations with a close friend about my uses and needs, and the hold off on wanting my credit card to authorize the purchase allowed sufficient time for me to, yet again, make a decision change.

I ended up canceling the order and went with the stock MBA 11" i5 128 GB at Amazon. Not only was it 5% cheaper with no sales tax, I had some reward points which I used to knock down the cost. I ended shelling out just a tiny bit over $1K for it. And it should be arriving some time tomorrow... go Amazon "mom" (it should be 'parent' but "Amazon mom", I admit, sounds a nicer marketing title) and subsequent Amazon Prime benefits of 2-day shipping!

Thanks everybody for your input and thoughts.
 
archangelg -- Congratulations on your 11 inch i5 MBA! It should give you all the power and performance you need and serve you well for several years. Although I have been using Macbooks, beginning with a G4, for nearly nine years. my 2010 MBA, which has only a C2D chip, has given me the best performance and user satisfaction of them all.
 
The main reason I went with the i7 is that I needed the 256GB storage option, so adding the i7 to that wasn't a huge increase in price, so I just went ahead and ordered it. Virtually everything I do can be done just fine by the i5, but decided to satisfy the "what-if" scenario.

Went go for the 2.5GHz i5 on my Mac mini; didn't need the i7 on that, but did want the discrete graphics chip since it runs two displays.
 
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