Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Macbook Air vs Pro vs future Pro

As mentioned, one of the things I'd like to pay triple for by owning it now instead of paying off my mortgage, is a new laptop. At the moment, I would probably like a basic 13" MBP, with a hdd upgrade to 500Gb. Alternatively, for the same price, I could get a 13" MB Air, with lots less stuff in it, but that SSD goodness (128GB). Both are similar cpu pace, battery life, OS. The Air has no optical drive and a few less ports, but it weighs almost nothing and looks awesome. I can live with the small HDD, by keeping my huge and growing iTunes podcast library externally.

Complicating the scene, macrumours estimates that macbooks are due for an update in the next few months. So I have to compare both present options against my fantasy macbook:
- onboard SSD (say 40Gb) for OS and Apps in addition to conventional HDD. This would need to be integrated with the OS though (ability to manage finite space for frequently executed executables), and if it was in Lion, I think someone would have noticed. I'd guess once full, you'd manage it as a cache of most-used executables with a clever defrag routine.
- more everything, and cheaper.
- blu-ray capable super-drive?
- longer battery life. 7 hrs is great, but you know what's even better? 8 hrs.
- smart management of iTunes library would be nice.
- displayport-to-something-useful adapters cost less. (I think displayport is now Thunderbolt).

Any readers want to speak up for a Wintel option that has very long battery life, looks as good etc?
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3 comments:

  1. BenAugust 17, 2011 at 9:01 PM

    I have a 13" MBP which I dual boot with Windows7 64bit. Both OSX and W7 run very nicely on the MBP, so I'm gonna recommend that!

    Air is a personal choice. If you want more portable but less grunt. I wanted the pro, it can handle some gaming (in the W7 boot) when the need arises :)

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  2. HuntsmanAugust 24, 2011 at 9:50 AM

    The Air is a beautiful machine and I am always jealous of my colleagues who have them when I am lugging around my MBP. One other difference is that the 13" Air has higher resolution than the 13" MBP. Also the SSD will give you a much more responsive machine than higher CPU power for most tasks.

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  3. GlenAugust 25, 2011 at 5:26 PM

    ...but does the volume knob go up to eleven?

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