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13" MBA vs. 13" MBP 2011 Review
- Thread starter Help Please
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It's not that they aren't, its just the Air is ultra-thin
Indeed it is.
I think I would have really liked the 13 MBA after seeing this thread. But I couldn't have gotten it since it didn't exist when I got my MBP last summer. Even if it did exist though, I might have still not gotten it because of 4GB ram limit (and BL Keyboard). Don't get me wrong though, I seriously want an Air now haha
I have a 15 inch MBP... I turn off the backlight to the keyboard whenever I can to get that extra 30 seconds out of the battery. Learned to type without looking at my keyboard at a very young age.
That's odd because I can easily get the 10 hour mark out of my MBP and sometimes even up to eleven. I only do Word, sometimes itunes and some little safari searches. Only thing I noticed is that idisk synchronizing really takes a bite out of my time if I need to re-synch the whole 5,5Gb.
So I could get the same 10 hours out of a MBP'11?
Edit: google was my friend again. Odd I haven't noticed that before. But I don't think I will be displeased with the 7 hours of the air, when compared to my MBP...
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I've never seen anything near 10 hours on my 2010 13"... I would imagine that you needed to have the brightness almost completely off and wireless off?
With my 2010 mbp 13 I took advantage of the optical drive with an optibay. So I had a 160gb ssd in the optibay and a 750gb 5400rpm drive in the regular slot. I miss that storage in my air. I also miss the higher contrast and much better color gamut on the mbp screen as well.
Brightness just à notch under half and I just write a lot in word always with my mail open, once every 10, 15 minutes I need to google something and sometimes I listen to some iTunes music. What does take a chunck out of my battery is iDisk that starts synchronizing every hour orso.
Ow perhaps that my samsung SSD makes a difference. But I regularly get well over 10 hours straight working.
I was happy to get 6 hours out of my MBA 11" yesterday. An hour over claimed limit. Not bad.
Not bad, this gives me good hope the 13" ultimate will performe even better than Apple stated.
am I doing something wrong?
I bought the MBP 13 higher spec with 750 HD and 8GB ram and expected it to be really fast, but it is a disappointment. I had a 12inch G4 powerbook for 7 years and thought the difference would be amazing but it is not. I can type faster than the letters appear on the internet with a high speed connection!! As for LR3 and CS5, really slow! Screen colour is good as I calibrated it with pro software.
Can I tweak the settings to boost performance? I have done the obvious things and I also turned off the back lit keys as they never dimmed in any light unless held out the window and I found that they hurt my eyes anyway. Thinking that with drop box maybe I could get away with the next MBA.
I bought the MBP 13 higher spec with 750 HD and 8GB ram and expected it to be really fast, but it is a disappointment. I had a 12inch G4 powerbook for 7 years and thought the difference would be amazing but it is not. I can type faster than the letters appear on the internet with a high speed connection!! As for LR3 and CS5, really slow! Screen colour is good as I calibrated it with pro software.
Can I tweak the settings to boost performance? I have done the obvious things and I also turned off the back lit keys as they never dimmed in any light unless held out the window and I found that they hurt my eyes anyway. Thinking that with drop box maybe I could get away with the next MBA.
Thanks for the great comparison, Help Please you may have convinced me
Thank you for this great comparison post, Help Please. Wish I would have seen this thread on Wednesday. Bought an MBP 15" anti-glare yesterday, will return for an exchange on Monday.
To my surprise the glossy screen is less stress on my eyes, and since I really only want a portable to keep my writing projects on, I'm going to exchange the MBP for a Macbook or MBA. I need to stop being so picky/snobby about the latest, greatest tech.
I write, surf and write some more.
I don't need an MBP for that, especially if the resolution is so high and text blurry, it negates all the current tech.
As I'm keeping my iMac now, what you described in your post definitely makes me rethink the MBA.
Thank you for this great comparison post, Help Please. Wish I would have seen this thread on Wednesday. Bought an MBP 15" anti-glare yesterday, will return for an exchange on Monday.
To my surprise the glossy screen is less stress on my eyes, and since I really only want a portable to keep my writing projects on, I'm going to exchange the MBP for a Macbook or MBA. I need to stop being so picky/snobby about the latest, greatest tech.
I write, surf and write some more.
I don't need an MBP for that, especially if the resolution is so high and text blurry, it negates all the current tech.
As I'm keeping my iMac now, what you described in your post definitely makes me rethink the MBA.
Glad I could help. I know the decision was tough for me too, but I have zero buyers remorse so far. I would never consider going back to the bulkier 13" MacBook Pro, not until they up the screen resolution at least. I hope you'll be as pleased with your Air, as I am with mine
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Sigh went with the Pro >
for now the resolution and price won out.
Yeah that 1280 resolution is helpful for me, as was getting almost $2 grand back. Once I get $300 paid back to me, this brand new base 13" MBP works out to $546 total.
So a complete win.
I am very impressed with the 13" air and will watch it carefully. I have a feeling it may eventually become my portable of choice.
Your review was very clear but I had to
listen to my eyes for now.
I hope everyone continues to enjoy their Air.
Sigh went with the Pro >
for now the resolution and price won out.
Yeah that 1280 resolution is helpful for me, as was getting almost $2 grand back. Once I get $300 paid back to me, this brand new base 13" MBP works out to $546 total.
So a complete win.
I am very impressed with the 13" air and will watch it carefully. I have a feeling it may eventually become my portable of choice.
Your review was very clear but I had to
listen to my eyes for now.
I hope everyone continues to enjoy their Air.
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It shouldn't be that slow, I have no idea what you do with it, and I haven't used anything higher than CS4 on this machine, but you have to remember that the bigger the HD, the slower it is. When I changed the 500HD 4200rpm to a samsung 256Gb SSD the difference was beyond imagination. Booting around 30-45sec, instant starting programs, i can see the size of every file and folder in finder. For me it was a huge investment of 550 but as I work daily with it, it was totally worth it. It's an old version and it still needs some maintenance every 6 months, I don't have any trouble with that.
1. The proper comparison would be between 13" MBP and 11" MBA, or between 15" MBP and 13" MBA.
2. Compared to the 13" MBA, the 13" MBP has a much bigger hard driver, superior processing power, is upgradeable to 1TB hard drive and 16GB RAM, has longer battery life, has a DVD/CD reader/writer, has backlit keyboard, and is a lot cheaper.
No, the battery life hasn't changed. Apple's test method has changed. They used to use a test that the MBP could run for ten hours, now they use a test that it can only run for seven hours.
Nonsense. With hard disk drives, the factors affecting performance are: RPM (the more, the better). Data per platter (the more, the better, so a 750 GB drive will be a lot faster than a 250 GB drive). Percentage of space used (the less, the better. So the same data on a larger disk will fill a smaller percentage of the disk and therefore be faster).
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I might have spoke too darn soon
Returning the MBP on Friday morning > weirdo sleep issues I just don't have the patience to deal with, especially since Apple Care didn't do squat tonight.
Don't know if I'll go the full refund route and wait, or eat my words and put out the extra money for the 13" Ultimate MBA now. Outside of a Mac Pro and a 17" MBP, the Air is the only Apple computer I haven't test run in the past year. Some were duds, some just weren't right for me. It's been a rough year in Mac-land.
Very glad, I got over the glossy issue with my 2010 iMac (I'm grateful I have one Mac that runs perfect). Which means one less issue with the Air.
Rereading Help Please's review, I still think HP makes a very strong case for the Air. Whether or not I jump on Friday remains to be seen.
I know an Air is in my future, just a matter of when.
Returning the MBP on Friday morning > weirdo sleep issues I just don't have the patience to deal with, especially since Apple Care didn't do squat tonight.
Don't know if I'll go the full refund route and wait, or eat my words and put out the extra money for the 13" Ultimate MBA now. Outside of a Mac Pro and a 17" MBP, the Air is the only Apple computer I haven't test run in the past year. Some were duds, some just weren't right for me. It's been a rough year in Mac-land.
Very glad, I got over the glossy issue with my 2010 iMac (I'm grateful I have one Mac that runs perfect). Which means one less issue with the Air.
Rereading Help Please's review, I still think HP makes a very strong case for the Air. Whether or not I jump on Friday remains to be seen.
I know an Air is in my future, just a matter of when.
Returning the MBP on Friday morning > weirdo sleep issues I just don't have the patience to deal with, especially since Apple Care didn't do squat tonight.
Don't know if I'll go the full refund route and wait, or eat my words and put out the extra money for the 13" Ultimate MBA now. Outside of a Mac Pro and a 17" MBP, the Air is the only Apple computer I haven't test run in the past year. Some were duds, some just weren't right for me. It's been a rough year in Mac-land.
Very glad, I got over the glossy issue with my 2010 iMac (I'm grateful I have one Mac that runs perfect). Which means one less issue with the Air.
Rereading Help Please's review, I still think HP makes a very strong case for the Air. Whether or not I jump on Friday remains to be seen.
I know an Air is in my future, just a matter of when.
I guarantee you, you won't be upset if you get the 13" Ultimate. Even I don't have the Ultimate configuration and this thing performs very nicely.
As far as the glossy screen goes, I don't notice it as much as I noticed the glossy effect on the MacBook Pro's.
I'm debating between a 13" MacBook Air and a 13" MacBook Pro w/SSD (128 GB).
With education pricing (my work is currently paying for me to take a class for a certification at a local college), the pricing difference is only $75.
I get a Thunderbolt port, i5 processor, more RAM, and upgradeability.
I don't care about the DVD drive. I may even consider using an aftermarket add-on to convert it in to a second hard drive bay.
Tradeoffs: weaker GPU, weaker screen resolution (actually kind of a big deal), thicker.
Primary usage: XCode, Photoshop CS5, and multiple Virtual Machines running Windows Server 2008 for learning purposes (working on my AD certification). Possibly some FCP.
Should I give the Air any consideration, or is it too light for this usage? Again, keep in mind, I'm talking about a MBP with a SSD.
With education pricing (my work is currently paying for me to take a class for a certification at a local college), the pricing difference is only $75.
I get a Thunderbolt port, i5 processor, more RAM, and upgradeability.
I don't care about the DVD drive. I may even consider using an aftermarket add-on to convert it in to a second hard drive bay.
Tradeoffs: weaker GPU, weaker screen resolution (actually kind of a big deal), thicker.
Primary usage: XCode, Photoshop CS5, and multiple Virtual Machines running Windows Server 2008 for learning purposes (working on my AD certification). Possibly some FCP.
Should I give the Air any consideration, or is it too light for this usage? Again, keep in mind, I'm talking about a MBP with a SSD.