Will the 11" MBA have an 8 GB RAM capacity ??

[Penn Jennings]

Possible, but at the moment, I do not feel it is likely. As of the moment, not that many people actually have a use for more than 4gb of ram outside of a "better to be on the safe side" reasoning.

When I went from 4 GB to 8 GB I saw noticeable performance inprovements. With out knowing what what applications people are using or HOW MANY appilications people are using your comment is a little dubious in my opinion.


I'd also add two things:

One, on an MBP 8 GB is only $50. Anyone planning on keeping their system a while and not afraid to install their own memory should seriously think about.

Two, the memory requirement for applications, on average, always increase over time. 2 or 3 years 2 GB was fine in general. Today, 2 GB is not enough. Even if 4 GB is fine today, the odds that it will be fine a year or 2 from now probably not good.

 

[igmolinav]

Ha, ha, ha ; ) !!!

 

[vitzr]

One never knows which way Apple will go with specs. Usually reinforced by their followers, they go conservative. It brings them so much more profit that way. For example, as recently as 2010 when introducing the new MBA, a measly 2GB of ram was standard. Thread after thread defended Apple saying 2GB was plenty. They all knew Lion was on it's way, and a new OS always has increased resource requirements. Yet they steadfastly put their head in the sand and denied the need for more. Now shipping with Lion you'll notice the minimum ram is 4GB. Apple is a bit hypocritical. It makes me smile

 

[Robyr]

One never knows which way Apple will go with specs. Usually reinforced by their followers, they go conservative. It brings them so much more profit that way. For example, as recently as 2010 when introducing the new MBA, a measly 2GB of ram was standard. Thread after thread defended Apple saying 2GB was plenty. They all knew Lion was on it's way, and a new OS always has increased resource requirements. Yet they steadfastly put their head in the sand and denied the need for more. Now shipping with Lion you'll notice the minimum ram is 4GB. Apple is a bit hypocritical. It makes me smile

That is not true. Apple has stated that the minimum for Lion is 2GB. They still ship 11" Airs with 2GB of RAM...

 

[vitzr]

That is not true. Apple has stated that the minimum for Lion is 2GB. They still ship 11" Airs with 2GB of RAM...

True, I forgot about that configuration. Yet it's widely understood that system requirements include the OS only. It takes additional ram to run ones apps at a decent speed. That's been true for years. If no additional ram is installed it will run but ever so slowly. It's generally not something most will tolerate unless they cannot afford an appropriate amount. Nonetheless 2GB is a pitifully small amount. Even the cheapest laptops today usually offer 4GB as STD.

 

[Beanoir]

One never knows which way Apple will go with specs. Usually reinforced by their followers, they go conservative. It brings them so much more profit that way. For example, as recently as 2010 when introducing the new MBA, a measly 2GB of ram was standard. Thread after thread defended Apple saying 2GB was plenty. They all knew Lion was on it's way, and a new OS always has increased resource requirements. Yet they steadfastly put their head in the sand and denied the need for more. Now shipping with Lion you'll notice the minimum ram is 4GB. Apple is a bit hypocritical. It makes me smile

Or there are those of us that really do have no more need than 2GB of RAM and to keep the cost of the portable (because thats effectively all an MBA is, a glam Netbook) to a minimum just selected the configs they needed.

I've never EVER come unstuck with 2GB, but this is always such a pointless conversation when it really just boils down to what people need. If you need 4GB, then get it, if not then why waste your money. Simple.

 

[Stingray454]

I very much hope for a 8gb option. I use my current (4Gb) Air to work on sometimes, and 4Gb is really not that much. 3-4 open programs and most of the memory is filled, anything beyond that is purely swap to the SSD. Sure it's fast when there's an SSD in the Air, but more memory would be a way better solution than relying on swapping.

I had 8Gb in my iMac - it was enough, but I hit the memory limit quite frequently. Just upgraded to 16 and now it's super smooth (though I rarely use more than 10, so 12Gb would have been enough, in retrospect).

8Gb would make the Air more of a desktop replacement and less of a "light surfing and mail-checking" machine, imho.

 

[taliz]

Spot on, people have an obsession with RAM for some reason - and in a little machine like the MBA it's not required. I think Apple will stick to the soldered on 4GB option for a while, keeping the MBP with the upgradable option for those that need it for pro tasks.

You couldn't be more wrong. 4GB is really a minimum with Lion. Lion itself consumes somewhere around 2-3GB. Just start up Firefox and a couple of tabs and it starts to swap almost instantly. You won't notice it much because of the SSD though, since that makes swapping much less painful. But the fact is that its seriously low on RAM for pretty much everything these days. All I do is run Firefox, Mail, Adium, Spotify & terminal, which I'm pretty sure is not far from what most people have running. And that's about 6GB RAM in my case.

 

[Robyr]

You couldn't be more wrong. 4GB is really a minimum with Lion. Lion itself consumes somewhere around 2-3GB. Just start up Firefox and a couple of tabs and it starts to swap almost instantly. You won't notice it much because of the SSD though, since that makes swapping much less painful. But the fact is that its seriously low on RAM for pretty much everything these days. All I do is run Firefox, Mail, Adium, Spotify & terminal, which I'm pretty sure is not far from what most people have running. And that's about 6GB RAM in my case.

That is just false. As I said in a different discussion, I just opened the entirety of MS Office, Chrome, and Photoshop and After Effects: 500MB Free RAM with 500MB inactive. A total of 1GB of accessible RAM.

 

[Beanoir]

You couldn't be more wrong. 4GB is really a minimum with Lion. Lion itself consumes somewhere around 2-3GB. Just start up Firefox and a couple of tabs and it starts to swap almost instantly. You won't notice it much because of the SSD though, since that makes swapping much less painful. But the fact is that its seriously low on RAM for pretty much everything these days. All I do is run Firefox, Mail, Adium, Spotify & terminal, which I'm pretty sure is not far from what most people have running. And that's about 6GB RAM in my case.

Brilliant, how stupid must you feel.

 

[jimboutilier]

I have a 1G virtual machine running Win7 going on my MBA nearly all the time, with a full load of other apps, and performance is excellent. I even run two in some cases. I don't think many people run multiple virtual machines at the same time, in the overall market for MBA owners. In fact, I think must MBA buyers probably don't even know what a virtual machine is.

As long as ones use is light enough - more task switching than multitasking that's quite possible and the MBA's SSD helps make that relatively seamless.

But 1gb of ram barely runs winXp well. No one recommends trying to run W7 in 1gb. Not sure what work you are doing in your VMs but even for the fairly routine browser, multimedia, and office things I do in VMs I've found a minimum of 1.5 gb for XP and 3 gb for W7 is required for decent performance within the VM.

I can run one XP VM and if I'm careful with what I do on the OSX side I can run ok in 4gb om my MBA. But I do have to be careful which isn't a great user experience. And for W7 I'm pretty much dedicating my MAC to the VM or the performance hit is noticeable.

You might be surprised at the number of MBA users who not only know what a VM is but use them regularly. Try a search in this forum and you'll see a fair number of VM questions with significant participation. And lots of threads about more than 4gb of RAM so the desire if not need is definitely there.

 

[jimboutilier]

That is just false. As I said in a different discussion, I just opened the entirety of MS Office, Chrome, and Photoshop and After Effects: 500MB Free RAM with 500MB inactive. A total of 1GB of accessible RAM.

To some extent you can both be right. OSX tries to do the best it can with the memory it has. The more it has the more it will use. The less it has the more it will try and avoid using and the more it will swap. And it will swap before using all available memory in any case.

I did a series of experiments with 1, 2, 4, and 8gb of RAM on the same machine and OSX - just changing the amount of RAM in the machine.

Things seemed to run ok in 1gb but there was a lot of swapping and if you were familiar with more ram you could tell the machine was significantly slower.

With 2gb there was a significant performance improvement. Felt snappy with light use. Still some swapping even with routine use and performance suffered with heavy use.

With 4gb there was a small performance improvement for regular use and a much larger one for heavy use. This is likely the sweet spot for routine users today which is why it's the base offering in most macs. Still occasional swapping even under light use and getting heavier with more programs and tasks.

With 8gb there was no noticeable performance improvement for light use. But under heavy use performance stayed high rather than falling off as it did with 4gb. Swapping was rare even under heavy use unless I tried to run multiple VMs

So you have to monitor both memory used and swapping to predict what a ram upgrade might do for you. The programs, files, and usage patterns will vary from person to person so thier ram needs will as well. What's fine for one person may not be for another.

My non scientific experiments indicate that while some users will be fine with 2gb, LIon is not running optimally even for light use. Lion does seem to run optimally with light use in 4gb and runs well but not optimally as use increases. It really depends on your usage patterns, programs, files etc that will determine the amount of memory you might need to run optimally.

In my case I run optimally most of the time with between 6gb and 8gb of ram.

 

[igmolinav]

Hi,

Thank you again : ) !!!

Kind regards,

igmolinav : ) !!!

 

[Maven1975]

I think the 15 and possibly the 13 CTO will have the option. I dont think it will be a standard line option though. Sonys 13" Z has it now. As for the 11", not a chance.

 

[igmolinav]

Hi,

Is your assumption perhaps that the 11" MBA won't have it?

Kind regards,

igmolinav : ) !!!