Which spec recommended for my lady? (mid-2014 MacBook Air)

[SHNXX]

I was wondering what you guys thought about the latest refresh.

I know she wants the 13 inch

I have some options on
Processor: 1.4 i5 vs. 1.7
Memory: 4GB vs 8GB

Storage I will probably go with 512GB since you can never have too much storage and I suspect she might want to run windows with boot camp (coming back to being a mac user after a long time with PC)

She will likely not use it for much computationally intensive tasks but in the past, toward the end of the computer's life (3 years for me), I have always felt the power limiting so I wonder if these two options can effectively extend the usage by a little bit.
She will be carrying it with her daily.
She runs her own business and sometimes does office work and sometimes does work at home.
Since she travels often, MBA 13 should provide sufficient portability without sacrificing too much screen real estate.

Anyway thanks for the help.

 

[dblissmn]

Will she be using multi-processor applications (e.g. Photoshop, Lightroom) or applications that benefit from more RAM allocated to video (e.g. Aperture)? Then I'd say, an i7 processor with more memory. If not, if it's just JPEG photos, office applications, maybe some database management or work-from-home, and Internet use, an off-the-shelf configuration should do. For me, it would be i7 all the way, with 8GB. But we're talking RAW D800 files, with the near-term likelihood of adding video.

One note is that you can always add more decently fast storage later. Sooner or later someone will offer a PCIe internal upgrade, and already there are external options that run very quickly on USB 3 or Thunderbolt without an additional power supply. What you can't do is upgrade memory or processor later.

 

[QCassidy352]

If you're planning on keeping it 3 years, 8 gb ram for sure. The i7 can't hurt of course, but the ram will make more difference both today and going forward for most users. Whether the i7 is worth it is hard to say; really not necessary, but if money's no big deal then why not.

 

[SHNXX]

She seems to keep her laptops for a while so maybe i7 will be worth it.

 

[FuNGi]

Definitely 8GB of RAM. The faster processor may help her 5% of the time and the larger storage is largely a convenience given the possibility of her having multiple external drives etc. The RAM is a must though, especially given the possibility of her running virtual machines and, if she's like my lady, the possibility that she will never close a program once it's open.