Should I wait? I need all your help!!

[asrermd]

I am traveling out if the country on June 7. I really want a 11" Macbook Air. It is light, I can use iphoto for photos and imovie for videos...(I am going to Africa on a photo safari). The question is...Do I wait for the new Air. It sounds as if the new processor will be much faster and may have a backlit keybord. Thunderbolt is not that important. I would feel stupid if I bought one now and then a 2-4 weeks later the new one, which is much more powerful, comes out. Any suggestions? How much faster is the sandy bridge vs the current Core Duo? Any true idea on when the new ones will be coming out? My alternative is to travel with an Ipad 2 and do all my photo work when I get home. It sounds like I am screwed by 2-3 weeks.

What would you folks do in my situation?

Any thoughts, info or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[torbjoern]

To what extent do you need the Air by the 7th? If I were you, I think I would take all the photos that I was going to take anyway and put them on some kind of storage (any kind). Then I would by the Air when I really really needed it.

On the other hand, we don't know for sure if Apple really will release a new Air this June. They might as well wait until Aug/Sep.

 

[Christina1971]

If i were in your situation I'd buy now, because it sounds like the 11-inch is right for your current needs. If you hold out forever for "perfect," you're going to miss a lot of time just working on and enjoying the computer.

If you really must have the new version (assuming that we see one in June) then sell your (not so) old one on eBay/Craigslist/whatever and consider the difference in price to be a rental fee.

 

[Moccasin]

I presume you'll be away for more than 2 weeks? If not, you could wait and see if there's an announcement before you go and buy at the last minute. If there's an update released before you get back, you can then upgrade to the new one.

Do you really need the most up to date one though? The view on here seems to be that the update won't have the same graphics grunt as the existing model.

I hesitated on buying my MBA 11.6" until after a short holiday to Barcelona and really regretted it. My old laptop was really heavy and nowhere near as useful as this would have been. I don't regret buying this thing for a minute and doubt I'll upgrade.

Would you use an iPad after your trip? If not, would a 32GB iPad be enough? Starts getting expensive if not and you would probably end up spending as much on buying and selling your ipad as you would buying the current MBA and selling it on when the new one arrives. That said, my brother used his iPad for a similar purpose on his holiday to France last year and found it worked well.

If it was me I'd buy it now and enjoy the portability of your MBA on the holiday. I'm quite jealous of your trip!

 

[fyrefly]

Travelling with an iPad may be a better option anyway. Are you planning on shooting RAW, though? That'll get tight for space really quickly.

No-one in these forums knows if the MBA Will get updated in June or not. Some people who are usually right about these things are saying it will. So there's a possibility.

Sandy Bridge will help you when you're applying effects in iPhoto and rendering clips in iMovie. That's 99% CPU-dependent, and that's where Sandy Bridge will spring ahead of the current C2D.

If you were doing Aperture, it's a bit more cloudy - there's no real facts/benchmarks to show how Aperture works on the Intel HD 3000 vs. the 320m that I've seen. I'm also not sure to what extent Aperture uses the GPU, but iPhoto and iMovie are all RAM/Disk/CPU-based, AFAIK.

 

[lasuther]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Wait. The Air update could be significant, it is probably going to be soon. The iPad will be fine on vacation, and you will be better off not editing photos on vacation. Wait until you get home to mess with pictures, enjoy your vacation, buy the new Air when it's releases.

 

[Macalaka]

I am in the same boat as alot of you in that I am wanting to pick up a MBA, but I am hearing alot of back and forth on C2D/320 vs SB/3000.
Personally I am going to use my MBA for work related stuff which is mostly alot of Xcoding and Photoshopping. I would rather wait for the new MBA to hit as I will probaby see more benefit to a SB processor vs the C2D.
I don't play games on my MBA so graphics are not something that is a deal breaker with me plus I fully believe the intel drivers for this will only get better which will make the 3000 good enough.

I just hope they don't downsize the MBA 13' available screen resolution to what the 13MBP's are running now as that would be a deal breaker for me.
I too also hope they do a backlit keyboard on the new model. I do alot of late night coding while watching tv in bed while the wife is asleep and that backlit keyboard on my MBP is a nice thing to have when I have to keep the brightness of my screen to a minimum.
Bottom line..wait. If nothing else and the new ones are a total bomb, the current models will be marked down enough so they will be an even better deal to pick up than they are now.

My .02

 

[Abstract]

asrermd: Buy now.


Macalaka: Wait.

 

[entatlrg]

If you need it now, buy it now.

SB dates, backlit keyboards are nothing but rumors, nothing is definite or highly probable, this is Apple we're talking about.

So don't bet having a computer for your trip on that. Sounds like the Air would be a cool tool to have along.

And hey if you can afford to go Africa on a Safari you can probably afford loosing a few hundred bucks when the update does come out so don't sweat it.

 

[xdarkdragonx01]

I'd say buy it now. I have the core 2 duo version and its powerful enough for photo editing. I use Adobe Lightroom 3 and it runs fine. When the new SB comes out, just sell it on ebay and get the new one. I don't think you'll lose more than $200.

 

[RealScience]

I can use iphoto for photos

If you're going on a photo Safari (sounds like fun!), sounds like you might be pretty serious about your photos. I would recommend that once you settle on a Mac, you take a look at Aperture. It costs $80 from the App Store, but what you can do is wait until the last minute and get the 30-day trial from the Apple website for your trip:

http://www.apple.com/aperture/

You will have plenty of time to evaluate it and compare with iPhoto while on the road.

Note that the $80 price is only on the App Store (boxed version is $200), and App Store is for "personal, non-commercial use." If you do any professional photography, the App Store version isn't for you. This is not to say that they have any way of checking, that I'm aware of, but I've found that most people want their software to be licensed properly, even if it costs them a few extra bucks--yes, I know someone here will disagree with that, this isn't the thread for this discussion

Edit: for what it's worth, I bought the current "Ultimate" 13" MBA about 6 weeks ago, knowing about all the rumors about Sandy Bridge. I'm very happy with it, and I doubt I'll be upgrading until Ivy Bridge or whatever the generation after next will be. I do lots of web browsing, watch TV via Netflix or downloaded from my TiVo, use Office 2011 (mostly Word), Photoshop CS3 (though CS5 trial I had for a while was very snappy, and the upgrade is on my wish list), and Acrobat 8 Pro for OCR of scanned documents. I'm also planning to get Aperture when I get started on the project to scan, touch up, and organize family slides. I haven't had any complaints wrt performance. The fans can get pretty loud when they come on (usually when I've been watching lots of video or gaming), but they're not noticeable unless the room is silent. Usually I'm either wearing headphones, or have some sort of a white noise source (like the air purifier) going that drowns the fans out.

 

[Oppressed]

How long is your trip? Can you abuse the 14 day return policy?

 

[brand]

I would recommend that once you settle on a Mac, you take a look at Aperture. It costs $80 from the App Store, but what you can do is wait until the last minute and get the 30-day trial from the Apple website for your trip:

http://www.apple.com/aperture/

You will have plenty of time to evaluate it and compare with iPhoto while on the road.

Note that the $80 price is only on the App Store (boxed version is $200), and App Store is for "personal, non-commercial use." If you do any professional photography, the App Store version isn't for you.

This thread isn't about photo management software but since someone already derailed it I would recommend Adobe Lightroom over Aperature for what it's worth.