Set on the 13" but go i7?

[tey112]

Only matters for single-threaded programs

I opted for the i7 over the i5 (2011 13") because of Solidworks. I don't know about the other cad programs, but the bottleneck for SW is cpu speed. The i7 (supposedly) has turbo taking it from 2.7 to 3.2(IIRC). That means it will be ~17% faster (no turbo) or ~39% faster (if turbo exists) for those single threaded bottleneck programs.

But if you aren't using something that requires high clock speeds, get the i5.

 

[adztaylor]

I went with the i5 + SSD combination, glad I did.

 

[iMackPro]

I've considered it, but I've not met anyone whose tried to use Ableton Live on a MBA. Though it's a hobby, it'd be the most taxing thing I would do...other than converting movies in handbrake.

But the MBA then brings with it another problem...storage. I only have like 18gbs of music, but I will have a terabyte of movies, where do I put those? I'll be serving them to an atv2

And yes, this will be my primary computer though yes I will have it hooked to a monitor as well...

Sell me on these points and I may bite

With thunderbolt you will have an external HD that will transfer at speeds of 10GB/s so you can literally move blu ray movie around in like 10 seconds a movie, if that. You could literally movie all of your movies around in under 10 minutes. that is amazing.

Ableton Live can run on the current MBA, and with the new SB chips it wont even "tax" your computer.

and with thunderbolt you can daisy chain and have your I/O Device set up and the monitor at the end of the chain and still have an ACD resolution if you want.


Man honestly you're made for the new 13 Ultimate AIR. feel free to PM me if you have any other questions as i am about to head to work.

Hope i sold you

 

[lowonthe456]

Does the i7 offer ANYTHING the i5 doesn't?

To be honest its about 10 seconds faster and I have never seen
an 13inch i7 in any of the Three stores around London (England)

And at all three stores each person told me to save my money
and buy the 13inch i5 base model
You can always pay £40 pounds more and upgrade the hard drive
but i went for the external option instead.

I'm not concerned about storage as I can do that myself.

Just read anandtech's article where they used the i7 13" and in nearly every test stood toe to toe.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4205/the-macbook-pro-review-13-and-15-inch-2011-brings-sandy-bridge/1

I think I may go that route. An ssd will be in my future once 500gb drives get reasonable.

 

[lowonthe456]

I'm going to go back to the ape store to at with them both again.

Any thought on so a way to test them? Run something from a thumb drive maybe?