New 13" Air vs. 13" Pro - Which one to get?

[shrihari]

Correct that it is higher. Better is relative.

You really have todecide if dragging around an external drive negates the advantage. Or I'd you are willing to revisit your workflow.

You could get the mbp and put an optibay in it.

Do you mean that the storage size of Air (128GB) would be a limiting factor?

 

[nagromme]

The higher the better, right? Air has higher resolution than Pro, right?

For most people, higher seems to be preferred. Higher res fits more windows and text in the same space. BUT it also means smaller text, smaller pixels, smaller everything. As a result, my friend who wanted an Air ended up with very similar 13” Pro instead, specifically BECAUSE she liked the look of the lower-res screen on the Pro. So it’s worth looking in person to decide.

All things being equal, though, I’d pick the Air every time. I will never go back to bulk! Bulkmonters are (sometimes) faster, but not enough faster to be worth it. The Air is plenty fast.

As for storage, I ask myself what I need on my machine. Answer: about 60GB of stuff. The rest is optional—and so I don’t mind getting an external if I need to someday. For instance, I’ll have my favorite few games on the Air, and the other games on a small external. Or I won’t even need one at all: I’m getting the 128 drive, and that’s room to spare. (Now, if I had my iTunes library on this machine, I might need more than 128. Most people will be fine with a mere 64, but for production work and future-proofing I’d want at least 128.)

 

[h00ligan]

Agreed.

 

[CHSeifert]

because its cheaper here in the US lol I found out the hard way that majority of things are cheaper in the USA compared to other countries even when it comes to imported brands.

US is a cheap country.

When they talk about 100.000 $ cars in the songs I laugh my azz off

In Denmark 100.000 $ is approx 600.000 Dkr, which gives you a maxed out VW Golf GTI or maxed out BMW 121 - not kidding !!!!

A Porsche 911 Carrera is 250.000 $ for the regular version

 

[CHSeifert]

Hello everybody,

I'm planning to get a new laptop this week and I'm circled down to the new 13" Air and 13" Pro.

A little background: I own a Windows desktop. Once I buy this new laptop, it will probably become my primary machine. I'm into Web designing and (web & desktop) development. But, its just web design most of the time. I don't do heavy Photoshop work. So, typically I work with a Google Chrome, Text Editor and a Terminal most of the time.

I'm confused between these two machines because:

1. Pro was updated in February. So it'll probably be upgraded for Lion in a couple of months.
2. Air has 1.7 GHz. I'm not sure if that would be a big drawback for me considering my activities and Air has an SSD (which boosts performance I hear)
3. The new Air's Geekbench scores are on par with the Pro. (13" both).

And yeah, I'll be taking the machine to college. So, a fair amount of Travel involved.

Thanks,
Shrihari

Get the maxed out MBA 13 Ultimate and don't look back.

If not this then I would get the maxed out MBP 15 1680x1050.

Only these two mobile choices if you do webdesign on the fly !

 

[Yumunum]

I've been deciding between the same devices you have, OP. I'm going with the 13" i5 256GB Air, because:

1. Higher resolution. I can have two decently sized windows side-by-side: Safari and Pages. PERFECT for research in my college classes.

2. SSD. Once you go solid state, you'll never go back. That's the solid truth

3. Lighter/thinner. This will let the computer be more portable for around the house. It won't really effect how portable it is on the go though, if you have a case full of computer gear still.

 

[toi]

2 months back i was looking to buy the 13 inch mbp , but i checked the macbook airs and really loved the form factor. i personally never use the cd drive.

if the mbp had a nice dedicated graphics card i might have leaned more towards the mbp for the long run but since it had inter hd 3000 i decided to wait to see if there was a sandy bridge update to the airs with backlit keyboard and it payed off

first day sandy bridge mbas came out i went and bought an 11 inch one and i love it. glad i dint get the mbp 2 months ago and hold off for the new mba.it was worth the wait.

the portability is simply unmatched with mba , I LOVE IT