Would I be crazy to go from a 17" MBP to a 13" MacBook Air?

[Nikos]

My 17" MacBook Pro has pretty much always been sitting on my desk due to its size. I'm about to go on a couple of trips, for almost two months, and it would be great to have a smaller notebook to carry around.

You can see the specs of my MBP in my sig. What kind of performance difference would there be between what I have and a 13" MacBook Air with the new 1.7ghz i7 and 8gb of memory? Will it be viable for music production (Ableton) and DJing with Traktor Pro? Does it multitask well?

One thing I'll never be able to get over is its lower resolution, but I think its size makes up for it. At home, I can connect it to my external monitor.

I have a week before I leave for my trip. Any and all opinions would be very much appreciated!

Mods, if this is better suited in the MacBook Air forum, please move it there.

 

[snaky69]

My 17" MacBook Pro has pretty much always been sitting on my desk due to its size. I'm about to go on a couple of trips, for almost two months, and it would be great to have a smaller notebook to carry around.

You can see the specs of my MBP in my sig. What kind of performance difference would there be between what I have and a 13" MacBook Air with the new 1.7ghz i7 and 8gb of memory? Will it be viable for music production (Ableton) and DJing with Traktor Pro? Does it multitask well?

One thing I'll never be able to get over is its lower resolution, but I think its size makes up for it. At home, I can connect it to my external monitor.

I have a week before I leave for my trip. Any and all opinions would be very much appreciated!

Mods, if this is better suited in the MacBook Air forum, please move it there.

You can always give it a whirl, you have a 14-day return policy on all new machines.

It'll make for a nice refurb on the Apple website if you end up not liking it.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

My 17" MacBook Pro has pretty much always been sitting on my desk due to its size. I'm about to go on a couple of trips, for almost two months, and it would be great to have a smaller notebook to carry around.

You can see the specs of my MBP in my sig. What kind of performance difference would there be between what I have and a 13" MacBook Air with the new 1.7ghz i7 and 8gb of memory? Will it be viable for music production (Ableton) and DJing with Traktor Pro? Does it multitask well?

One thing I'll never be able to get over is its lower resolution, but I think its size makes up for it. At home, I can connect it to my external monitor.

I have a week before I leave for my trip. Any and all opinions would be very much appreciated!

Mods, if this is better suited in the MacBook Air forum, please move it there.

How much of that 750 GB hard drive do you use? MBAs are much smaller.

 

[Nikos]

How much of that 750 GB hard drive do you use? MBAs are much smaller.

A lot of it, to be honest, but that's nothing an external drive can't fix. Most of what's on my drive doesn't need to go everywhere with me. I do have about 45gb of music, and that's always growing, so I'd probably have to go with the larger storage option.

 

[ScholarsInk]

I'd imagine that, due to changes of architecture, it will be more powerful than your MBP. As for storing things like music, you could always get a Nifty MiniDrive or something.

 

[Nikos]

I'd imagine that, due to changes of architecture, it will be more powerful than your MBP. As for storing things like music, you could always get a Nifty MiniDrive or something.

This is swaying me towards the Air. I wonder how the i5 would hold up against my CPU. I haven't been keeping up lately.

 

[Johbremat]

If you're doing audio you'd be better off with the i7, given all (digital) audio is, is number crunching. i7 is typically more efficient (that's why in a test of comparable core speeds the i5 should be trumped).

On it's initial release, I was running Live 8 on a 2.2GHz C2D with 8GB of RAM slower than what's in the MBA, all on spindles rather than SSD.

I'd say you should be fine with Live (especially 9, which seems to be a little less resource intense) and TP (I was doing four decks with keylock; all four decks running an independent effects chain).

Would suggest you carry two drives around, if possible. A single spindle with all the kit you need, and an SSD if you're rocking a gig (just drop what you need plus a little from your larger mechanical drive).