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How Good Is The MacBook Air Processor (For Intense Web Browsing?)
- Thread starter rekhyt
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Yeah. When I was in school Pentium Ms and 40 GB hard drives were in $2000 laptops and even then you were struggling to find space for your documents, pictures and music. Once people started storing videos and manufacturers responded by upping disk space to over 100 GB, it not only brought prices down but was a Godsend to the average laptop user, someone like me who uses it to surf, listen to music, office suite documents. Its still bizarre to me to read comments like "500 GB isn't enough space for all my stuff" when I remember days where I would delete music files just to find space for my papers and reports.
I have found that I can only read a couple of threads and then I need to take a break.
- Wasn't talking about the iPad - was deciding between MBA 11"/13" and a MBP.
- I know a friend who is planning on getting the base 11" MacBook Air. He does 'intense web browsing' as well, going up to 50 tabs in Chrome on a white MacBook before crashing.
Would it be suicide to have such little processing power in this situation? (Especially when one is using the MacBook Air as the sole computer.)
Wouldn't the fan rev up to 6K and the heat of the MacBook Air 85 C°+? (And how would you rip a movie using Handbrake without a superdrive?)
Thanks.I was just concerned about the processing power of the MacBook Air, especially because I was struggling with processing power on my previous MacBook (Late 2007 : 2.16 ghz).
Your goals are unreasonable for many computers, not just the MacBook Air. I just did a quick test with Chrome on my Mac Pro, which has 16 GB of RAM. I loaded my company's website in about 20 tabs. The process "Google Chrome Renderer" was taking about 30 MB of physical RAM (not counting virtual memory) for each tab. 50 tabs would translate to 1.5 GB just for rendering 50 tabs. Sure, the MacBook Air can be configured with 4GB of RAM, but you sound like the kind of person who is doing much more than just loading static business websites.
I would suggest to get one of the new 4-core Sandy Bridge MacBook Pros, and load it up with at least 8GB of RAM. That's about the only laptop that will give you the performance you need.
I don't have any issues with the performance on my MacBook Air, but then again, I have an 8-core Mac Pro with 16 GB of RAM at my desk, which is what I use for work - especially when I do my work in scientific computing.
*sigh* You're just not intense enough.
What you do is called 'browsing'. What I do is called winning.
I am on a drug. It's called Apple. If you try it once, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.
I used to drink Tiger blood. Now I drink Snow Leopard blood.
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Well, I'm not browsing all the sites at once - the other tabs are in memory while I'm reading away at one page.
The MacBook Pro that I have right now (C2D 2. ghz) goes a bit laggy for my uses. I'm (was) planning to switch out my MacBook Pro for a MacBook Air 13" Ultimate, but since it would mean that the MBA would become my sole computer (Desktop would be at home while I'm away at uni.), it wouldn't necessarily work, would it?
... No... Well, perhaps the need for a good performing computer isn't necessarily based upon my... 'intensive browsing', but the workflow that I have.
Hmm. Well... I don't know. I'll continue waiting for the June/July refresh of the MacBook Air and consider then.
+1
If you're not into 3D gaming, I'd say that you're spot on. We're not talking about the Atom here.
Emac-1.25ghz
I still use a 1.25ghz eMac for simple spreadsheet work and some web browsing. Usually I have about 5-10 tabs open at the same time, and it feels fine. I also have a c2d iMac and when doing the same type of work on both, the iMac doesn't feel any faster.
I still use a 1.25ghz eMac for simple spreadsheet work and some web browsing. Usually I have about 5-10 tabs open at the same time, and it feels fine. I also have a c2d iMac and when doing the same type of work on both, the iMac doesn't feel any faster.
lol.. That cracked me up. As you finished the sentence I was thinking a partially handicapped human
I went from a 2010 MBP 2.4ghz C2D w/ 4gb ram to a base model MBA 1.8ghz 2gb ram. I have similar usage as you and it holds up okay. I definitely push it sometimes and see some stutters but for the most part I'm satisfied. The SSD definitely makes up for the rest. Everything pretty much loads much faster. If I did it over I'd opt for the 4gb but since I got mine refurbished it wasn't an option. The ultimate MBA should work for you but maybe an SSD in your MBP instead?
Wait for the sandy bridge airs this summer/fall. Get a 1.6 core i7 in the air with flash storage. That'd be a great computer.
The one thing about Chrome - the more tabs you open, the more memory it eats up. I avoid Chrome like the plague because of its design and I just don't quite trust Google either. Firefox with a ton of tabs is just fine though + Safari, Adium, Skype, then I might have Aperture, Photoshop, a Java based stock streaming client, Word, Excel and such as other apps running.
Check how much all those Chrome processes are eating up right now for you, you might be running out of memory possibly with the mix of apps running?
Check how much all those Chrome processes are eating up right now for you, you might be running out of memory possibly with the mix of apps running?
What exactly is intense web browsing. How intense could web browsing actually be? Like intense as in. Omg! What pop up am I going to come across next intense?