MBP late 2011 or MBA mid 2013

[Thorsson]

Hi everyone,

I am deciding on buying latest MBA with 1.7ghz + 8gb RAM + 256gb ssd. I am currently using MBP i7 2.2ghz + 16gb RAM + 500gb hdd. I am travelling a lot but when I am not travelling I plug it into monitor.

Based on the geekbench results new MBA is still ~20% slower. But these are synthetic examples. Do you think in real world tasks like ror development or ios development? No intensive games or heavy rendering included.

I have a feeling it might be quicker since ror dev requires lot of file reloading and xcode precompiles a lot of classes before using it. Adding extra 8gb to MBP didn't improve a lot fo performance.

 

[wepiii]

I think it will be much faster real world because of the ssd speeds compared to the standard 5400 hd.

 

[Thorsson]

This is what I thought just want to hear second opinion on it.

 

[FastEddiebags]

why don't you just upgrade your hard drive to a solid state instead of buying a new laptop for that sole purpose? It will save you money and the MBP should handle your daily needs easily

 

[glenthompson]

I have a similar MBP and recently installed a SSD. It made it a new machine. Disk I/o was my bottleneck and the SSD got rid of it. Much cheaper solution than a new MBA.

 

[Thorsson]

I travel a lot and reducing weight in half is a big advantage for me but I don't want to sacrifice performance too much also all day battery is a great thing also. If the new MBA have comparable performance as my current MBP then I am taking it.
That's why I would like to know whether would I buy and money really doesn't matter a lot

 

[FastEddiebags]

I'm sure you will love the MBA, I am just saying that if you upgrade your MBP with an SSD, there is no way the performance between the two models would be equal. As for battery life, MBA probably wins every time.

 

[Count Blah]

Will you be mad in two months when a MBP comes out that will be even "better", with a similar SSD?

 

[Thorsson]

Will you be mad in two months when a MBP comes out that will be even "better", with a similar SSD?

I am already waiting few months and I've gone mad for not introducing them, but as I am looking something for the road 13" fits better and 15" is the only one having dedicated graphics. So I am going with 13" MBA just don't want to have slower performance than existing one.