Selling MacBook Pro for high-end Air?

[upsguy27]

I have a mid 2010 MacBook Pro with specs in my sig, and I've been debating on selling it and getting the 13" 1.8Ghz MacBook Air. I primarily use my Pro for lots of video editing, photo editing, gaming, pretty much everything. Common applications I use include Final Cut Pro X, Photoshop, After Effects, Color, Aperture, and less intensive things like web browsing, word processing, and iTunes. I also have a Windows partition with a bunch of Steam games installed, and on the Mac side I have The Sims 3, Starcraft II, The Movies, Portal 2, Left 4 Dead 2.

The reason I'm thinking about the Air is because I daily take my laptop with me to multiple places for on-location editing and portability is key. Considering that the Air is pretty much made for portability, and it has benchmark scores higher than my MacBook Pro, is it worth selling what I have now and getting the Air?

 

[Mikey7c8]

Sure you gain portability, but you can kiss your ability to play games goodbye - at least to any reasonable level of detail.

Also any app that you're using that's gpu accelerated - you're back to cpu. Plus you will lose screen real estate - though not an issue if you're plugging in at your location.

Personally, if I had that list of requirements and wanted more portability than my 17" then I'd get an upper end 15, what with them being quad-core and all, still being able to play your games and a bit more portable.

 

[cdcastillo]

Also, you would lose a lot of HD space, and it seems to me (for the applications you listed as using regularly) you clearly need the hard disk space. I wouldn't trade your MBP for a MBA. At least not for the foreseeable future when SSD space is still limited and expensive.

 

[Young Spade]

It seems to me that you're doing the exact opposite thing you should be doing.

You do heavy work on the laptop.

It's a good machine, but it isn't made to be the end all, be all machine people make it out to be.

You're going to see a drop in performance, speed (when rendering files), and screen quality (higher density but lower quality).

If you want more speed, put a SSD in your machine, I recommend the Samsung 470 as that gets great reviews.

 

[Apple OC]

join a Gym and keep the MBP ... the MBP is better suited to your needs

 

[Yumunum]

Keep the Pro. You need the space, GPU, CPU, and bigger display for what you do

 

[mshepherd]

i just switched from an 09 macbook pro with 2.53 core 2 duo, 512mb dedicated video card, 250gb 7200rpm drive and 4gig ram to the maxed out 13 air. There was a huge speed increase/responsiveness. I am primarily doing development but Xcode runs a lot better for me on the new air.

 

[Young Spade]

i just switched from an 09 macbook pro with 2.53 core 2 duo, 512mb dedicated video card, 250gb 7200rpm drive and 4gig ram to the maxed out 13 air. There was a huge speed increase/responsiveness. I am primarily doing development but Xcode runs a lot better for me on the new air.

That is due to the SSD. Nothing more, nothing less.