Need some advice. cMBP or MBA?

[b738]

Hi, I am not sure what to get and I've been thinking about this for a long time.

I will need my future laptop for my studies, nothing that requires a high performance, but I'm not sure if I will need the optical drive... so I dont know what to do now.

I like very much that the air is very lightweight and it has a battery that lasts long.

What I dont like very much about the cMBP is that it hasn't been updated for a while so maybe I'm paying for an 'old' product...


What should I do? Thank you very much

 

[agenda893]

From the sounds of it you'd be better off with the new macbook air (ideally the 1.7GHz with 8GBs of RAM and at least the 256GB SSD, or 512GB if you can swing it). You can always add an external optical drive for the rare times you'd need it; decent ones cost $30-40. With the cMBP you'll have a lot of extra weight to lug around, less battery life, intel HD4000 graphics (way less powerful than the HD5000 in the new air), etc. The new 13" rMBP will be out soon too, and would be something to consider since you'd get a faster CPU and better display, buying you a year or two of more use before needing to upgrade over the air.

 

[b738]

I think i will definitely go to the MBA, because my brother has a cMBP and in case i need it i would swap laptops and that would be fine.

The price difference are 200€ and i think it has many advantages getting the new air.

I would get the 1.3/8/256 13". Does anyone know if flight simulator would run properly?

Can i use windows in case i need it? I am pretty sure uni programs will need windows, so what will i have to do? Thanks in advance!

 

[agenda893]

I would get the 1.3/8/256 13". Does anyone know if flight simulator would run properly?

Can i use windows in case i need it? I am pretty sure uni programs will need windows, so what will i have to do? Thanks in advance!

Depends which flight simulator. The MBA specs are a little weak for X-Plane, it should work but I'd try the demo before you buy it. If you're looking to use Microsoft Flight Simulator you'll be fine but you'll need to use bootcamp to install a retail copy of Windows 7 or 8. When you boot the laptop you can choose between either OSX or Windows. The only issue with dual booting is each OS takes up some of your SSD space. I'd partition at least 60GBs for your windows install so you'll have room for a few applications. There is also the option of using VMWare Fusion or Parallels, which lets you run both operating systems at the same time, but doing that to run 3D games will give you very poor performance.

 

[AtomicGrog]

Faced a similar choice at beginning of the year, daughter needed a new school laptop and it came down to the MBA vs. MBP.

In our case we went for the pro. Deciding factors were:

• The weight differential wasn't a decider
• There was still a performance uplift when using the pro (not sure of this still stands...)
• The pro can be upgraded, the air you need to invest upfront.

Cost was near identical... within $40 iirc.

 

[b738]

I finally bought the 13"/8/256/i5 MBA. Thank you all. Really looking forward to recieve it!