New MBA or MBP?

[Panch0]

Sounds like a lot of us have been waiting for the new MBS to make this decision!

I've currently got a 2008 unibody 13" pro, 2.4GHz, 4g RAM, 256G SSD (Crucial M225). It copes perfectly with my usage - running all of the MS Office Apps at the same time, including 8+ spreadsheets simultaneously.

I've been desperate to switch to the Air for weight loss, and am now wondering if the current version (13", 2.13 GHz, 4g RAM, 256 flash) will cope as well.

Does anyone have any idea whether it will give the same performance in terms of speed of application operation, switching, and start-up?

(I'm only looking to match performance here - not worried about battery, keyboard, cost, ports, optical drive, and user upgradeability)

Thanks in advance!

For the usage you have listed, the RAM is the critical element, and the two systems would be equal there. Apple seems to be playing up the start-up time of the new Air, but I haven't seen any real world reviews yet. I can't imagine that the Air would start-up any slower than your current system, so worst case they are again equal.

 

[stockscalper]

Yes Apple is really putting a lot of attention on boot time, which is a red herring. Most of us keep our laptops in sleep mode and they wake up immediately anyway. What we care about is having enough juice under the hood to run our business programs and these new models look short both on the initial ram offering and horsepower. If Apple had come out with this upgrade a year and a half ago it would have been a great upgrade to the Air, but now it's just plain lame. Not to mention too little too late.

 

[Chiquon]

Thanks all,

Sounds like I am not going to notice any difference if RAM is the key factor in how fast multiple applications run.

I notice the graphics are different: 2008 MBP with the 9400M vs new MBA 13" with 320M....not sure if this will make any noticeable difference when running lots of applications.

On this basis I'm still very tempted to press the button on the Air. If it can match the performance of a 2008 MBA with SSD and lighten my briefcase by a pound then I am sold!