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Which MacBook Air did you buy and why?

entatlrg

entatlrg

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Mar 2, 2009
3,385
6
Waterloo & Georgian Bay, Canada
I bought the 2011 13" i5 256 for my home office, it hooks up to a 27" ACD 20% of the time. I always buy top of the line, had the i7 first, returned it for the i5. I felt the i7 ran 5-10 degree's warmer and went to the i5 to hopefully maximize battery life and have less heat and fan noise.

(Since then the heat / fan noise threads have just about disappeared so people are obviously happy with either the i5 or i7).

Also bought the 11" i5 for travel. Couldn't decide, bought both, use both everyday all day ... Mac Pro in my office collects dust. :D
 
I went with the the MBA13, i5, 256GB.

My biggest reason was portability. I'll be starting med soon and wanted a computer that did what I needed but didn't take up space. Switched from a PC so it's been a big change...but not having to carry around a 7lb giant with me all the time has been nice.

I didn't notice a difference at all moving from a 15"...in hindsight I don't know why I bought such a large notebook to begin with. I rarely play games and when I'm watching movies it's either on my iPad or on my TV through my PS3.

Tested out the 11" and the 13" in store for a while over a few days (lost a lot of productivity :p ). 11" hurt my eyes after 10 minutes of reading...and I'll be doing a LOT of reading on this thing over the next four years. 13" was beautiful and was light enough to not bother me.

Very happy with my decision. Sold my HP notebook promptly after opening the box of my MBA.
 
Hmm....

Well I bought the base 13" model (1.7/4/128). It replaced my 3 1/2 year old Macbook (2.4/2/160). When last year's models came out--I was pretty obsessed with the 11" version. I figured it would be wonderful for some ultra-light travel packed with decent performance. Money issues stopped me from buying last years--which turned out to be great as this year's are a lot more powerful and updated.

Coming back to the base version. I more than likely wouldn't have been able to float this had I not discovered other users on this forum doing the Best Buy Trade-In. Getting 45% of the cost of this computer paid for my trading in my old Macbook helped a lot. Having a large line of credit with Best Buy and 18 months to pay it off took care of the rest.

Back to my obsession with the 11" model. I would have gone 11" had it been possible to get the i7 at Best Buy. Obviously this wasn't possible, so then I had to break down pro's and con's between the two. Anandtech's review finally put me into the 13" category based on the processor being more powerful.

As for storage space--I figured I might have to change a few of my habits--but there was no reason why I couldn't fit everything I needed to onto my 128 GB.

There's my story, what about yours?
 
whoa whoa whoa, Best Buy trade-in?? 45% of the value??

Did you have to buy the item FROM Best buy in order to do that? I'm assuming you did...which makes me regret buying this thing direct from Apple since chances are two-three years from now I'll want to sell (ie. when AppleCare expires)
 
rayjay86 said:
whoa whoa whoa, Best Buy trade-in?? 45% of the value??

Did you have to buy the item FROM Best buy in order to do that? I'm assuming you did...which makes me regret buying this thing direct from Apple since chances are two-three years from now I'll want to sell (ie. when AppleCare expires)
Click to expand...

I guess I made it sound better than it was (or maybe it was just that good.) My old Macbook was it pretty amazing condition, 2.4 ghz c2d/2gb ram and 160 GB HD. Best Buy does its Trade-In based on some weird formulas--the jist of it was, my spec's were on the low end of the "higher level" specs. (i.e. 80-159 GB HD,) etc. So I got a higher value for mine even though it was barely better.

Anyways, I got 560$ for my old computer when the new MBA 13" was costing 1239.99. That's roughly 45%.
 
entatlrg said:
I bought the 2011 13" i5 256 for my home office, it hooks up to a 27" ACD 20% of the time. I always buy top of the line, had the i7 first, returned it for the i5. I felt the i7 ran 5-10 degree's warmer and went to the i5 to hopefully maximize battery life and have less heat and fan noise.

(Since then the heat / fan noise threads have just about disappeared so people are obviously happy with either the i5 or i7).

Also bought the 11" i5 for travel. Couldn't decide, bought both, use both everyday all day ... Mac Pro in my office collects dust. :D
Click to expand...

13" i5 with 256GB SSD.

I need the space.
 
rayjay86 said:
did you buy your original macbook from best buy?
Click to expand...

No. If you go to Best Buy's trade-in page, there is a list of stores that you can look-up in your area that will take non-receipt trade-ins. Even then this can be wrong; I was told that it is dependent on the local laws, whether or not they can do non-receipt trade-ins (ie. fraud).
 
I bought the 13" MBA i5/4/256 at the Apple store. I get a work discount at the store but they had no 256 i7s in stock.

The 256 is what I wanted most. I need the storage for travel.

I have to say I'm lovin it!


___________________________________________
MBP 17 c2d 2.8
MBA 13 i5 256
TC 2TB
IPOD C 160
HTC EVO 4G (Never leaving Sprint)
 
I bought the 2010 11" 128gb. The 320m outweighed the new processors for me. I'm loving it and don't regret passing on the 2011.
 
Got 13” i7. I needed power for application development (osx and via bootcamp) with the biggest HD available.
 
Base 13". 128GB should be enough for my use. I would have gotten the 11" if they offered it with a higher resolution.
 
I completely went the Goldilocks route on my MBA purchase.

1st) 13" 128GB but returned it because I came from a 500GB MBP and 128GB was too small

2nd) 13" 256GB but returned it because 13" seemed too big

3rd) 11" 128GB and it felt juuust right

The problem was that I didn't initially understand what the air was or how it fit in my life. I treated it like every laptop ive bought in the last decade but once I sorted it out I knew exactly what compromises were worth it and what I needed. So now I'm loving the 11" Air and even saved $500 from what I thought I'd be spending so I complimented it with an open box 2010 Mac Mini.
 
Last edited:
urkel said:
I completely went the Goldilocks route on my MBA purchase.

1st) 13" 128GB but returned it because I came from a 500GB MBP and 128GB was too small

2nd) 13" 256GB but returned it because 13" seemed too big

3rd) 11" 128GB and it felt juuust right
Click to expand...

I don't get it. If on the first 128GB was too small (coming from a 500GB MBP), how can the 3rd be just right? Was that a typo? :confused:
 
I got in December 2010a maxed out 11". 4GB and 128SSD beause impossible or difficult extend afterwards. So gettin maxd out to be on the safe side for LION at that time
 
My previous setup was a 13" 2010 MBA for everything - media, gaming, work, etc.

Thanks to some excellent deals on Newegg and MicroCenter, I was able to build a MicroATX machine with a 1TB HDD, Radeon HD 6570, and i3 2100 for under $320.

My replacement MBA is the 13"/i5/256. I prefer the screen of the 13" and love using the SDXC slot for my iTunes media. With the 256GB I don't have to keep as close of an eye on my installed applications; I expect I won't have to compromise for a few years with 256GB. I went i5 because that's what Amazon was selling when I had the coupon. Otherwise, an i5 or i7 didn't make too much of a difference to me (though I would prefer the edge in battery life over the edge in performance at this point).
 
I bought my wife the 2010 11" (1.4ghz/4g RAM/128g SSD)...and we've BOTH fallen in love with it! What an incredible piece of engineering...it truly is incredible both for our business and casual home surfing, recipes in the kitchen, light games (my wife loves Bejeweled), and email, invoicing, and inventory tracking (we run an Audio and Video production company)

We use iMacs for our field computers...but until this year, we've always used MBPs as our backups on site. This year, I've bought 3 of the MBAs..and the new 2011 17" core i7 MBP. We've got two 11" ultimates (purchased yesterday at our new Mac store...I was REALLY surprised the had the ultimates in stock; core i7 with the 1.8ghz proc, 4gigs RAM and the 256gig SSD). I also picked up a 13" core i5/256 when they first released....so we now have 4 MBAs...3 (the 11s) will be our field back up machines for audio production...backing up the iMacs. The 13 will be my wife's business computer for everything mentioned earlier.

I also have one of the 11s with me today...and I can see my MBP starting to gather dust...as well as our 2010 MacPro at home! I've turned it on twice this summer...and with the speed of the new iMacs...forthcoming TB storage options, external graphics, et al...I'm not sure I'll need the MP after another year or two. Seems lately that Apple is bucking the trend when it comes to speed. Forget about the heat!! "They're begging for the new procs...Let's give 'em to 'em!" The new MBPs...the new iMacs, these little Airs...with core i7s!!! Phenomenal!!! As much as I love all of our Macs for different reasons...IMVHO, the 11" Air is the coolest computer Apple has every built. Just an awesome piece of engineering!!! I still can't get over how fast these SSDs are. External media management is a cake walk...and reasonably priced. I just picked up a couple 1TB Western Digital portable HDDs...the ones that are powered by the USB port, just a bit bigger than a deck of cards...for a Hundred Bucks!!! Unbelievable. a dime a gig...and they keep getting cheaper. I'm really looking forward to some options with ThunderBolt.

More dangerous for me than a casino opening up...they just dropped a new Apple store here in Anchorage, Alaska over the weekend. I'm in trouble!!!!

J
 
I went with the 11" Ultimate for the portability, space, and power. This one is going to be a keeper for me.
 
I went with the base 11" this year because of the portability and price. I sold my white unibody macbook to buy it and at first I thought that the 2gb of ram wouldn't be enough but this little guy is fast! I am more than satisfied with my purchase and when I need a bigger screen or a place to do more extensive work, I just move a couple of feet and work on my 27" iMac :)
 
ZBoater said:
I don't get it. If on the first 128GB was too small (coming from a 500GB MBP), how can the 3rd be just right? Was that a typo? :confused:
Click to expand...
Nope. Its a change in mentality. I came of a 500GB 15" MBP and was used to carrying EVERYTHING with me on the internal. So when trying to make it fit I felt cramped with 128 and got a 256GB. But when I decided to get the 11" then I realized I could use the money saved to buy a Mini which would serve my data and so with a lot of trimming the 128GB now felt "adequate".

Its odd because we've quickly gone from a time where capacity was everything to a (questionable?) period where mobility means taking the bare minimum with you. It will all sort itself out in the end for us individually but for now I can live with 128GB and connect to the Mini if I need any of the data I archived.
 
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