Viewing 27 posts - 1 through 27 (of 27 total)
  • Macbook air?
  • Alex
    Full Member

    Year end for our limited company. Ideal time to buy some assets before HMRC come calling. I have a Macbook Pro which I use for work and home and it’s great. But I’ve been lusting after a macbook air for ages. This one is two years old which I think means – in my strange little world – I’m due an upgrade 😉

    The 13in air looks fantastic. I had a fondle in the apple store a while back. Any real life use stories? I was going to buy a couple of ipads as well, but it seems that we’re due a new tranch of the mini and the 10 inch soon so assume that’s a bad investment decision?

    wobbliscott
    Free Member

    The new MacBook Pro looks not that much smaller than the air now since they’ve ditched the cd drive. Unless you really want the slightly smaller external dimensions I see no reason to pay for the premium for an air. Other than that, I’ve a few work colleagues that have had then for a few years now and they’re fine.

    zokes
    Free Member

    I got an i7 air a couple if years back and it’s been brilliant. But… I’ll be getting a retina pro next, not enough difference in size to warrant the performance difference now imo

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    Alex
    Full Member

    Interesting. It was the smaller form factor I was after and the SSD really. So option is a the new macbook pro with Retina?

    allthegear
    Free Member

    I couldn’t imagine going back to an Air now having had a retina for a few months…

    Even if I’m sat in Terminal in full screen mode, the screen is amazing.

    Rachel

    wobbliscott
    Free Member

    It’s worth checking out the new pro. Like I said, when I compared the two side by side the pro was literally only a few mm larger and was cheaper for same spec. Since then the new air has come out but I don’t think it’s any smaller than the previous one.

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    I vote for the air – to me the main advantage of the pro is bigger hd storage and retina screen option. If you compare prices a 13 256gb air is much cheaper than a retina pro.

    If you sell your two year old pro let me know (email in profile) – fwiw I just put a 750gb hd and 8gb ram in my 2009 mac mini and it’s been transformed (stuff bought online and followed youtube how-to videos). You could put an ssd into your pro.

    DavidB
    Free Member

    The only way you would get my Mac Air 11″ is by prising it from my cold dead hands. The best portable I have ever had, it runs linux/windows and OSX comfortably together in 8Gb of memory and the form factor is bang on for my needs.

    prettygreenparrot
    Full Member

    The 13″ rMBP is a nice machine. But it is not in the same league as the Air if you’re carrying it around a lot. I’d much rather travel with the Air than a rMBP.

    Spec for spec the Air worked out better value than the 13″ rMBP when I was looking late last year at ‘which new macbook’.

    disclaimer: I looked seriously at the 13″ rMBP, 13″ Air and 15″ rMBP as options towards the end of last year. In the end I went for the 15″ rMBP. Most power, retina display and reasonably portable with great battery life.

    weegi
    Free Member

    I have the 13″ i7 8Gb MacBook Air and it’s friggin amazing, took it off the charger yesterday morning at 7am, used it all day with client meetings, bluetooth on/wifi on etc, not been back on charge and used it for a good couple of hours this morning and the battery is still at 23% charge.

    Use Parallels 8, run Windows 7 for MS Project and MS Visio with no issues, nice, quick, keyboard is excellent to use and the screen is great, very happy I went for this model over the pro with retina.

    It’s only a few weeks old but I would not go back to a Windows laptop now. It also runs v cool and the ebay adapters (so gigabit network, VGA adapter etc) all work well with it, so need to fork out £25 notes a piece when the £5 ones work fine.

    Alex
    Full Member

    Ta all. Having been doing a bit of surfing, I’m coming back to the air. I use it mostly for work and surfing and run vmfusion on this on with win7/office which seems a perfect combo. Just prefer the mac when I don’t need office although considering office for mac this time around.

    Not going to sell my mac. I stuck 16 gb of memory in it a while ago and it flies. I did consider a SSD, but I think I’ll try the SSD in the air and decide if it’s worth an upgrade. I am going to buy the wireless backup device as well. Even being an ex-it guy I am useless at backing stuff up.

    Jamze
    Full Member

    Might be swapping office job for more mobile work soon, so went for the new Air. Early days, but very impressive. Quick, quiet, runs cool, just the right size (went for the 11″, not much bigger than an iPad really to carry around). Battery life is best bit, be sensible with screen brightness and it lasts for ages. Used it all day yesterday on WiFi, still going strong this morning listening to podcasts and stuff.

    allthegear
    Free Member

    SSD totally transformed my mid-2009 MBP.

    Rachel

    Alex
    Full Member

    Good to know Rachel. How tricky is it to install? Memory was very easy but I assume HD to SSD is a bit more complicated?

    andytherocketeer
    Full Member

    SSD is identical form factor. Just plug and play.

    Note that the air is all soldered on RAM and SSD though now, and no user changeable battery, so spec what you will want up front. If the battery dies in 2 years, it’s gonna go in the trash can, not on eBay. And given my rate of MB battery failures, I wouldn’t trust anything that can’t be changed easily.

    Personally, the Air 11″ makes sense for ultraportability, but the 13″ pro for anything else.

    5thElefant
    Free Member

    Depends what you plan on doing with it I guess. I prefer my Ms surface to my airbook.

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    @Alex – swapping disks is fairly straightforward – I followed advice/videos sources via macrumours forums or ifixit – I had a few problems but got the answers there – I had to do two formats of the new as the first cloning didn’t work properly (using superduper but carboncopycloner is supposed to be better and you can get a 30 day trial). I didn’t realise but the mc has some very cool boot options – can either boot from any disk inc one connected via usb or into a full safe mode where you can download a fresh os install from the web. I bought an external hd case so I could format and clone the new disk, I used this also when the first clone didn’t work as I booted from original hd inside the external case.

    From what I’ve read on macrumours ssd transforms the machines as @allthegear has said – if you had of sold me yours that what I would do

    By the way there are online services which can back your machine up from wifi if you don’t want to go for the full mac solution.

    @andtytherocketeer – I didn’t realise things inside the Air were were soldered on – surely it’s possible to replace just not so user serviceable

    footflaps
    Full Member

    SSD totally transformed my mid-2009 MBP.

    I keep meaning to fit an SSD in my MBP, must get round to it one day….

    andytherocketeer
    Full Member

    RAM is soldered on in the Air
    SSD is technically replaceable, but an Apple specific connection

    SSD in the MBP I’d assume is same as any other HDD, ie standard 2.5in SATA device (certainly is in older models).

    TBH, none of that would bother me now – just spec a decent spec at purchase time. But given that I needed 3 brand new batteries to get my MB to last beyond 2yrs old, I’d at least like the batteries to be easily replaceable. And that’s regardless of whether it’s an Air, a MBP, Windows surface machine, or Chromebook. Although at £250 I’d bin a Chromebook after 2 years, but would be mighty peeved if I was left with a £1000 MB/Air with a dud battery.

    johndoh
    Free Member

    I set a business up in 2004. Bought a Mac Power PC tower at £1500.

    Business went well and bought an iMac in 2007 at £1200.

    Bought an Air last year (13”) from the refurb store for £850 – by far the best kit I’ve used. Quick to start, doesn’t miss a beat, light, funky. What else do you need?

    geoffj
    Full Member

    11″ MBA here. It’s been the least reliable of the 6 recent macs I’ve had ( mix of MacBooks, iMacs and mac minis).
    Currently on its 4th logic board with a few residual USB connectivity issues.
    Works great as long as I don’t want to hook it up to an external display or some 3rd party peripherals.
    I reckon it’s just a bad one off though and I’ll have another when its time to replace it.

    vikingboy
    Free Member

    I bought a new air to go with my pro recently, loved 802.11ac networking and the added battery life meant I treated it like a big ipad rather than a laptop. New hd4000 is 2x hd3000 from the pro and processor was ok too.
    I’m looking forward to the new pro though.

    simon_g
    Full Member

    If the battery dies in 2 years, it’s gonna go in the trash can, not on eBay.

    Out-of-warranty battery replacement on a Macbook Air is £99 fitted (actually same goes for all non-Retina 11-15″ Macbooks with built-in batteries), and Apple Stores can usually do it in a couple of hours tops.

    MBA is good kit, even better now with the new Haswell CPUs which almost double the battery life. Still good value next to other Ultrabooks, even if you do put Windows on it. We get free choice of laptop at work <£1000, there are a lot of people with MBAs even though we’re a Microsoft partner. In fact, I know a few people at Microsoft doing the same.

    Alex
    Full Member

    Ta all. Bought an air. Even after having much frustration at not being able to upgrade my MBP to mountain lion. Shall take a look at SSD options for this one when I get a minute.

    Lazgoat
    Free Member

    The new Macbook Air’s are meant to be awesome and only key down by being non Retina. The new SSD’s are meant to be phenomenal which makes the machine really fly.

    Last year I put a 256Gb SSD and 8Gb RAM in my mid 2009 13 MBP and it’s given it a new lease of life. It boots to the desktop in under 10sec and shuts down in about 4. Any other non SSD computer frustrates the hell out of me now!

    onrbikes
    Free Member

    I used a MAcair for a tour through china and love it.
    So small and portable.
    Just bought another for the wife.
    We always go to the mac online store to the refurbished items.
    $850 gives same warranty and all new packaging delivered.

    I use Gimp for photos and Bean to replace Microsft.
    Both very good programs

    onrbikes
    Free Member

    I used a MAcair for a tour through china and love it.
    So small and portable.
    Just bought another for the wife.
    We always go to the mac online store to the refurbished items.
    $850 gives same warranty and all new packaging delivered.

    I use Gimp for photos and Bean to replace Microsft.
    Both very good programs

Viewing 27 posts - 1 through 27 (of 27 total)

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