2nd hand air

[mattpreston11]

Am toying with the possibility of getting a 2nd hand macbook Air

rev b
1.6ghz
80gb hdd
2gb ram

for £400, has slight cosmetic damage but fully functional.

Thoughts?

 

[Scottsdale]

Pass.

If you cannot buy a v 2,1 MBA, don't buy an MBA.

The v 2,1 just keeps getting better and better with its Nvidia GPU, OpenGL, OpenCL, H.264, and driver updates.

In addition, if you want it to be fast, buy the SSD in the v 2,1.

Absolutely positively, AVOID the original MBA at all costs. Buy a PC instead, buy an MBP instead, buy an MB instead... AVOID the original MBA for now and forever... hell, even if it's free. Your quality of life and time is too important.

 

[mattpreston11]

I've heard a few people say how bad the first one is. I was trying to find some demonstrations on YouTube. Is it really that bad? I mean for £400 it seems a pretty good deal. Maybe I need to see it for myself.

Has anyone else got a revA?

 

[mac jones]

Pass.

If you cannot buy a v 2,1 MBA, don't buy an MBA.

The v 2,1 just keeps getting better and better with its Nvidia GPU, OpenGL, OpenCL, H.264, and driver updates.

In addition, if you want it to be fast, buy the SSD in the v 2,1.

Absolutely positively, AVOID the original MBA at all costs. Buy a PC instead, buy an MBP instead, buy an MB instead... AVOID the original MBA for now and forever... hell, even if it's free. Your quality of life and time is too important.

WTF?

Don't take it if it's free? It will ruin your life?

I don't know, I use mine every day. Maybe I should throw it out the window.

Na, I think I'll just suffer through it LOL

 

[matelot]

Pass.

If you cannot buy a v 2,1 MBA, don't buy an MBA.

what's so bad with the 1st Gen ?

 

[lucifiel]

Rev A was known to lock up due to heat issues, and it overheated a lot.

That and it has an integrate graphics from Intel rather than nVidia, rendering it all but useless for any 3D applications.

It is basically too slow to do any real work. Rev B and C are a vast improvement over Rev A, and the price differential between A and B/C nowadays is not significant enough to justify buying A when it performs so much worse than B/C.

 

[crazytrain]

Rev A

Well I guess it all depends on what you mean by 'real' work. I've had a Rev A with 64GB SSD from day 1 and have never had any major issues with it at all. It has never locked up. Yes it does heat up, but less so than my black Macbook does. I do have Coolbook installed (but then, who doesn't?). I use it every day at work (and home) for e-mail, internet, iCal, Word, and Excel. More recently I've been gradually using Numbers more than Excel. Use Keynote routinely too, occasional Photoshop use - admittedly not huge files, but works fine for me. Also use ConceptDraw Project and MindMap, Bento, iPhoto and iTunes on a regular basis. Have also used it to watch ripped DVDs without any problem whatsoever - the fan comes on, big deal - no lock-up, no dropped frames or stuttering - as I said, very similar to the Macbook.

So what exactly is this 'real' work that I'm missing out on, and how is this 'ruining my quality of life'?!

I really don't understand why it gets such a bad press - there is no question that the later versions are better, but, as I said, I have had no issues at all with mine so I don't know if there really were so many issues or just a few people with 'lemons' that shouted loudly?? I can honestly say that I have yet to see a reason to upgrade mine - have been thinking about installing a larger HD, but thats about it...

 

[matelot]

...I do have Coolbook installed (but then, who doesn't?)...

I dont have it...does it really work ?

 

[GeekGuys]

Rev A isn't THAT bad!

I have had a Rev A 80GB HDD version since it first came out. Yes, the SSD Rev 2,1 is faster and smoother and better and will make your wife love you, and your children beautiful and bring you riches beyond belief.
The Rev A, however, is the spawn of the devil. If you own one, then you must be in league with lucifer and you will catch cancer and your house will burn down and your wife will leave you for Juan, the pool boy.

Oh, hang on.... I'm still married and doing quite well, and not ill and have never met Lucifer (although possibly tweeted him a fwe times!)

£400 is quite cheap for a UK Rev A. If a new version comes out soon, this would be a reasonable price, or slightly too high I guess.

Real work.... well, I guess running an IT support company, using Parallels, Quickbooks, Office 2008 (yes, that is a bit slow but not unusable) plus a host of web development and server support tools on my 80Gb HDD Rev A is not possible.... nope, that is what I do daily.

Yes, I will admit to Mr Scottsdale that the Rev 2,1 is fast and would make for a better experience during boot and application loading. I wait to see what he says about the next version (should it appear). As soon as Rev 3,1 turns up, will he claim that the Rev 2,1 is useless and will ruin your life? I suspect so.

So, expect it to take upto 90 seconds to boot from cold, expect about 2-3 bounces to open Safari, 5-6 bounces for MS Word or OpenOffice..... is that worth paying only £400 for a piece of wonderful technology.

It is to me.

If you have the money, you don't mind paying a premium and you need faster response times in your life then go out and buy a new one.

 

[crazytrain]

I dont have it...does it really work ?

Makes a big difference to the fan cutting in/overheating

 

[cleric]

Can you really run youtube on a Rev A for anything more than a 1min clip at low resolution? I mean even with hardware acceleration on Rev B some of the higher resolution stuff really stresses it.

 

[Satori]

I really don't understand all the fuss about the rev A MBAs. They weren't perfect but they certainly weren't as bad as some people seem to make out. I get the sense that the worst rev A. experiences were had by the very early adopters. I got mine after some of the manufacturing issues had been ironed out.

My rev A. works just fine for standard computing tasks (including surfing flash based sites). I have never needed to use coolbook or to reapply the thermal paste. The fans often go quite high but are very quiet.

Geekguy's post gives a very good representation of the snappiness of the machine.

Ideally you should try it tout before you buy it to see whether it meets YOUR needs.

 

[jahala]

I had a rev A and a rev B macbook air. You can get by with a rev A machine. I got rid of mine before the rev B machines came out because it would freeze more often than I thought was reasonable, especially using flash or MS office 2008.

When the rev B came out, I tried the air again with an SSD. The difference was huge. It ran so well that I still miss that machine. The need for more ports, especially audio line-in prompted the move to a 2008 aluminum macbook that I am still using.

My point is that the rev B machines, especially with SSD, are so much faster and provide such a better experience that is worth the money/wait to skip the rev A altogether.

 

[482214]

I bought a first edition Air as soon as they were released... I only kept if for 2 months before selling it on ebay and buying a small sony at the time (which later got replaced with a pro).

Basically for basic e-mailing and net surfing it was fine... anything above this and it just overheated and crashed/locked out... it ran very slowly a lot of the time and often wouldnt play back itunes movies properly.

This was brand new so I wouldnt like to think what one would be like now.

If its just for basic net surfing and e-mail, etc I should think your £400 would be much better spend on a brand new Ipad

If its for than anything more than the basics above than go with anything else than this air like everyone else has said here.

However... if its free I would take it. Its really not that bad!