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Recommendations for purchase

Medic278

Medic278

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 1, 2012
657
0
New York
So currently I have a 13 MBP and now my brother who is serving in afghanistan wants a MBA. Since I don't know much about them and only played a bit with one at the store because the air wasn't for me I was wondering if someone could give me some insight into which to purchase. He said that he isn't sure which screen size he wants all he really does is surf the net and stream the occasional movie or TV show nothing really intense no video editing or anything like that, so to all those MBA experts which would you recommend?

Thanks again for your help
 
Thats what I was thinking too, is there anyone who has any experience with that one? If so does it fit your needs well?
 
While I don't have experience with that particular machine (my MBA is a 13"), I'd really suggest that you reconsider the size of the SSD; 64GB is pretty small these days - any sort of sizeable iTunes library will eat into that as will other applications. For what it is worth, I'd recommend that you consider 128SSD (and you can get very reasonably priced ones in the Apple online refurb store) and go with that configuration.

Best of luck with it.
 
After thinking about it I am going to buy new and will have apple upgrade the SSD to increase it for him so that he will have hopefully plenty of space to work with. He doesn't really do anything too intensive and I think a 128 would cover him just fine, he really doesn't use iTunes as he just buys all his music off his phone, so he probably won't even sync it up with the computer and he has a lot of his movies on flash drives and SD cards so that should make it a little easier on the SSD.
 
Medic278 said:
After thinking about it I am going to buy new and will have apple upgrade the SSD
Click to expand...

The SSDs in the MacBook Airs are soldered to the board, and therefore can't be replaced or upgraded by anyone :eek: Sorry if you already know this, but the SSD size the computer is built with is the size it stays with. So if you want a bigger one you have to buy/order a bigger one. Good luck :)
 
Thanks for that I am not terribly familiar with SSD so that clarification is helpful now that I know that it is for sure going to influence which one I purchase now as its so permanent lol.
 
Thank you for everyones input it is appreciated. I went today and purchased the high end 128gb SSD 11 inch MBA for my brother so I hope he is happy with it, I personally love it its a fun little guy and makes a great little brother to my Pro lol!
 
mrsir2009 said:
The SSDs in the MacBook Airs are soldered to the board, and therefore can't be replaced or upgraded by anyone :eek: Sorry if you already know this, but the SSD size the computer is built with is the size it stays with. So if you want a bigger one you have to buy/order a bigger one. Good luck :)
Click to expand...
Not true. You can upgrade the SSD quite easily. OWC makes a third party SSD that's compatible with the Macbook Air.

Now the RAM... now that's soldered to the board and can't be upgraded.
 
Well I am happy with the purchase it really is quite a fine machine and I really like it. If I didn't need the optical drive I easily could have bought one of these. So far I am pretty impressed with its speed and capabilities its truly a pretty impressive and innovated machine. Overall impression so far very very impressed.
 
The cheapest he can find. like a refurbished as suggested

if its just for browsing/youtube/netflix and sending a mail.. why spend a lot? :)
 
Because I am an awesome brother! To be honest I don't have a good answer for you I have said before that I wish I knew about refurbs before I bought my iMac and Pro. To be honest because its a gift for him and what he is doing I just wanted to get him something new for himself. I think a Marine serving overseas deserves it.
 
Medic278 said:
Because I am an awesome brother! To be honest I don't have a good answer for you I have said before that I wish I knew about refurbs before I bought my iMac and Pro. To be honest because its a gift for him and what he is doing I just wanted to get him something new for himself. I think a Marine serving overseas deserves it.
Click to expand...

I absolutely agree. He will enjoy for sure. You are a good brother.
 
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