Thinking of buying MBA Ultimate, a few questions before I do this...

[erkanasu]

I thinking of upgrading to the MBA Ultimate for increased portability and to enjoy it's design. I currently have a 13" 2009 MBP with 500GB and 8GB Ram.

1) Will I see a speed increase? Will it feel like an upgrade? Will this puppy be fast enough to run applications like Ableton Live ( a more intense version of garage band you might say)? I'm a musician and use the MBP for live shows it does the job very well.

2) Do you think the weight difference will be significant and noticeable?

3) I currently have about 350GB used on my hard drive. This will be an issue going down to 256GB. How do you guys handle this? Is it easy to have your itunes stored on an external? What's the most streamlined way to share data in a household.

Thanks! I know it's a lot of questions but I want to make sure this is a good idea!

 

[dudup]

Can't tell about the 8 GB RAM, as I don't know the size of the projects you load on Ableton Live.

I think you can open up Activity Monitor and run a typical session of heavy use, and the notice how RAM consumption go across the board -- please notice that the more ram you have, the more OS X will use for caching so it can avoid reading stuff from the hdd.

My feeling, though, is that it won't pose a problem.

CPU wise, the 2.13 ghz is very good. It's not a powerhouse like the new MBPs, but it's very good, and keep in mind that no one stress the CPU for very long time nowadays, except when doing workstation class stuff, like encoding video or processing effects on a authoring tool.

If your machine is hdd based, I suggest you upgrade it right away, as SSD is worlds away. Apple SSD is not the speediest, but it will give you zero management, unlike other solutions (had an OCZ Vertex that was a real screamer but OS X is lacking on SSD support, hopefully it changes soon).

The new display is 1440x900, that alone is worth the upgrade if you run audio apps. The weight and thinness are very welcome on a DJ setup, trust me on that.

One major bogus is the lack of the backlit keyboard. This is not bothering me too much because I've been very busy and haven't played gigs lately, but surely you'll miss it. If you can't live without it, than I advise you to not go for the Air. I know this is not a big deal for everyday users, but in a dark club it can be trouble.