My MacBook Air was $1,799 and the equivalent MacBook Pro (top of the line 15″, because why would you buy the 13″?) would cost me just over $3,200 (adding 3rd party SSD, Apple 8GB RAM and the Hi-Res screen).
Man, this is disingenuous. 8GB RAM? As if you can't get it cheaper (or the MBA even offered 8GB RAM as an option)? Or as if the 15" MBP doesn't blow the Air out of the water in every other aspect? I bought a 13" Pro because (a) it's smaller and lighter than the 15" and (b) I don't play PC games.
13" MBA with 256GB SSD, 4GB RAM, 2.13 GHz C2D -- $1799
Sure, I don't have a Hi-Res screen (the one Pro feature I wanted on the 13"), but I can actually upgrade my computer in 3 years when 4GB RAM becomes a bottleneck. Now that's a low year-over-year computing cost.
The MacBook Air is an awesome machine, to be sure, but it's awesome because of the built-in SSD--not because of the value it provides.
> Sure, I don't have a Hi-Res screen (the one Pro feature I wanted on the 13"), but I can actually upgrade my computer in 3 years when 4GB RAM becomes a bottleneck. Now that's a low year-over-year computing cost.
You can also upgrade your MBP RAM cheaply today (or tomorrow) to 8GB.
Not only does the MB Air not support 8GB, it's soldered on, so you can't upgrade.
I think that point is that if he were buying a MBP that it would not be able to justify the purchase to himself without maxing everything out. So that price comparison is really only applicable to him.
Are you sure you want to own your MacBook for 3 years?
The depreciation on Apple laptops is low enough that you can resell it and trade up to the latest refresh once a year for the same cost as trading up once every 3 years. If you're interested in the best bang-for-your-buck and can put up with the hassle, you should definitely think about it.
I'm always surprised by people that don't see 13" screens as having a utility value - portability. I've recommended people get 13" laptops when their needs require this portability (eg: tertiary students). Those that said "no, I want a big screen!" for the e-peen value later regretted lugging a 15" screen around. Big screens are awesome... unless you're moving around a lot.
It is easy for the comparison to come out either way depending on personal preferences because the specs are pretty close.
I did the exact same assessment as you 4 months ago and bought the MBA 13" because a) I cared about the high-res screen more than the processor speed, and b) I only expect it to last 2 years so 4GB RAM is enough (insofar as you can ever have enough RAM.)
Very true. I've used an Air as my only development and design machine for 2 years now; I love it; the thing has only 2Gb of RAM and it's still blazing fast for most everything. This is completely due to the SSD, which wasn't standard when I bought it, but seemed worth splurging for. I sleep better at night with less moving parts. When I sleep. Which I don't.
Not MBA-related, but for MBP machines you can use an OptiBay bracket to pull out the optical drive and replace it with an SSD or HD. Couple notes on that:
- The OptiBay is $80, but includes a USB enclosure for your SuperDrive to turn it into an external drive: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/
- Cheap clone brackets are ~$20 on eBay, work just as well.
- The original HD bay includes a sudden motion sensor to park the heads on a drop. Ideal setup is to put an SSD in the optical bay and a HD in the internal.
- Battery life doesn't seem affected by two drives. I suspect cpu/video/display power significantly outweighs power from an SSD.
- The optical bay is 3 Gbps, the HD bay is 6 Gbps. Don't bother with the extra cost of new 6 Gbps SSDs if you put it in the optical position.
- If you do this on a new machine, do your boot camp install before you remove the drive. MacBook Pros have some kind of hard-wired device order that makes it impossible to install Windows from an external USB/FireWire optical drive.
I run a 250 GB SandForce SSD + 500 GB 7200rpm drive. SandForce does on-device garbage collection, which helps since OS X has no general-use TRIM support, and I do photo editing on the road so the faster HD is great.
I have almost the exact same setup, save for a 120 GB SSD. But everything you've said is correct. I would add that the setup is surprisingly straightforward and that the OptiBay product comes with great installation docs. Unlike 2007 and earlier Apple portables, this generation is pretty easy to crack open.
I love my 15" MBP configured as described. No, it's not especially light or sleek compared to a MacBook Air. But it's the fastest, most responsive machine I've ever used in my life. And the processor is a smidge fresher, so I feel better about obsolescence.
One tip if you're going to go the two drive route:
You can symlink heavy files that apps expect to be on your startup disk to your HDD. So in my case, I've symlinked my iTunes movies, iTunes U, iPhoto library, and a couple of other things and store them on the HDD. I don't touch these often and when I do, time isn't of the essence, so there's no point consuming my precious SSD capacity.
I did the same SSD and HDD to OptiBay replacement, but I have different results. The battery life dropped about 30%-40% and that wasn't the issue. The real problem is the heat, as usual on Mac, Flash is CPU raper, but with HDD in place of DVD drive its 6200/RPMS in any flash video > 360P.
I recently bought a 2011 MBP 13" and did this. SSD with Win7 in the cd bay, 7200rpm drive with OSX in main bay.
Boy is the 'no boot from USB' thing on the new Macbooks a giant pain in the ass! Installing it is one thing, but last night for some reason Windows wouldn't boot so I needed to to startup repair, had to unscrew the whole thing and put the superdrive back in to do it. Should have been a 5 min operation, wasted a days work (superdrive was at home).
I wonder if I can make a 5gb partition on my main drive to be a windows install disk in case it happens again?
Awesome info, thanks! I'm looking at doing exactly this soon. A few questions:
How do you have your OSX directories partitioned across the drives? Can you move, say /, to the SSD while keeping /home/media on the larger platter drive? I only know how to do this with Linux, not very familiar with OSX despite it being BSD-based.
I've got a similar setup and it got me thinking about buying a used mac pro tower to max out the 4 HD slots with SSDs and RAID them across. Anyone try that or know if the speed boost would be noticeable?
Oh, and it's worth mentioning--I fully expect Apple to remove the optical bay entirely in their 2012 design refresh. Mayyyybe they'll keep a second bay as a stock option, but I doubt it!
Anyone have experience with the knockoff optibay adapters on ebay? They're cheap (~$10 to $25) - [edit: never mind, that's what he means by $20 brackets.]
I've owned the original 12" Powerbook G4, and the first-gen MacBook Air (no SSD). With both of those I ended up with some buyers remorse about six months later, feeling like I was making some huge performance tradeoffs for the portability that ended up biting me later on. The 12" G4 was just plain slow, while the first-gen Air was hamstrung with crappy GMA950 graphics and a really slow disk. From what I've read the SSD on the original Air was on an IDE interface
and wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway.
I bought the new 13" Air the week after launch and absolutely love it for a dev environment. XCode runs nice and smooth and it now seems to me that an SSD is nearly essential to make Eclipse feel usable.
We're coming up to the 6 month point where with those older laptops I would think "oh God why did I spend $1800 on this," and I still think this is the best computer I've ever owned.
I use MBA (4GB RAM upgrade, 128GB SSD) for doing a lot of XCode development. XCode4 runs very smoothly and I've never had any speed issues with running the iOS Simulator. It's light, doesn't heat up, and is very stable. I gave up my http://chir.ag/stuff/5lcd.jpg setup for a single MBA and I couldn't be happier (my electric bill went down by $125/month).
From personal experience I know that I'm more productive on 5 LCD than on 3 LCD or 2 LCD setup. However, I spend a lot more time working on my MBA than I ever did on my desktop and though I work slower, the end result is that I'm overall producing more.
I'm the only one in our company not using any external monitors. The added screen real estate would be nice, but the downside is that then you have a different setup in the office and on the road. I rather get used to a single screen I always have with me.
Every time I get on a plane I wish I had an Air, but it's just not justifiable. Not only do I have and use my 8GB RAM (Photoshop, Parallels, browsers, Rails + large test suite), but the peripheral ports are critical. I don't think my Time Machine backup would ever get off the ground without the initial Ethernet plugin, not to mention the times when the DSL goes out at the office I can just plug into the hardline normally reserved for our Mac Pros. Also Firewire is another thing that may not be needed every day, but hurts bad when you don't have it (need to transfer a couple GBs between Macs quickly? Compare to wifi to Firewire Target Disk Mode). Even the SD card reader is quite handy. I'll leave the optical drive out because honestly that would be fine as a peripheral (although I do salivate at the thought of a top-tier 64GB SSD boot drive + 1TB data drive in optical drive bay).
I do have a bit of Air envy from time to time, but then I count my blessings that I live in a time where I have a portable workstation that I can use as my primary machine and carry from home to work every day. That is amazing in and of itself.
I concur with authors opinion of MBA. The 13in MBA is the best computer I've ever owned. My current Mac Lineup consists of:
* Latest gen 13in MBA
* 17in MBP (~1yr) work paid for it
* 13in Black Macbook (loved this one too!)
* Mac Pro (totally pimped out) work paid for it
* 3rd gen mac mini
The only machine I use now is the MBA. It is everything a Web Dev needs, great resolution, fast, travels well. It even plays Minecraft quite well. The only thing I'd ask for in the 3rd gen models is a back-lit keyboard. Love this machine.
I don't understand this obsession for backlit keyboards I've been reading about a lot lately on forums. It definitely looks nice but its just a battery drain and I assume most HN people don't look at their keys. I always keep mine off for the sake of my battery.
Same here, 13" 4GB MBA, bought after my neighbor's apartment fire forced me to get a new system for the 4.5mos without my old computers. Got it all back eventually. I use my MBA constantly, at work and home (hooked up to a 24" at home). I have a W7 quadcore w/ 3 monitors that I only use for Photoshop/server stuff.
I went from having a 17" Mac Book Pro core i5 and a Mac Pro 8 core, both with maxed RAM to my MBA 13" top of line.
While I love the SSD, and I love the form factor, when working at a desk I really really pine for more RAM and a faster chip. I push the machine super hard on a normal day, not even when doing development.
Now as a portable, nothing can beat the thing, and when working on its 13" screen, it forces you to edit your multitasking so you really don't push it as bad. But when hooked at a 27" screen, you are tempted to multitask more and it gets bogged down.
Next week when the new iMacs come out I'm going to probably get one of those to use as a desktop machine and use the MBA as a portable. With Dropbox and MobileMe and Google sync, this is an easy proposition.
I'm using my MBA (no upgrades, lowest end model) for my daily routine as a designer, and it's holding up perfectly well. I am mostly just running Photoshop, Illustrator, Textmate, and a few browsers. Hell, I was even able to play Portal 2 on this thing. It's definitely the best $1,000 I've ever spent on tech, and I'm a Windows guy.
The only downsides are if I have a bunch of large files open in Photoshop and Illustrator, I might have to save and close some to keep things running smooth. When I'm plugged into a 27" display, some things are not quite as smooth.
So yeah, I'd rather be working on a faster desktop system (though the benefits would be minimal), but I can close this, bring it home, and continue working with the same workspace.
And the monitor is better than my Dell 22" I have at home.
'Enough'? Understatement. It's practically perfect. Sure it's not your gaming rig or fit for Final Cut Pro, so that could change things if this sounds like you... but as a developer it easily trumps every machine I've ever owned.
I think I'm really late into this and nobody will read my comment but I will give it a try.
Six months ago I had a iMac 24" and a MacBook Pro 13" for studying and portability. I noticed after I bought my MBP that I didn't use my iMac as I thought to be using. Not because it was slow or bad or something. No it was just horrible to synchronize both devices with my work and study related stuff (Yeah I know now better that it is a charm with Dropbox).
While I was deciding if I should sell my iMac I decided to sell both iMac AND my MBP. Why, you ask? My MBP was just fine but sometimes I had to carry a heavy books plus MBP with me and this was why my back was hurting. So I decided to switch to something lighter and faster (and yes my MBA is way faster than my MBP ever was).
After selling both devices I bought a MBA with 128GB SSD and 4GB Ram and happier than ever before. This was one of the best decisions I made in my environment. And if anything happens to my MBA I will order a new one with thinking a moment about it.
Pro's:
* It is very fast,
* it is light as nothing else,
* I have instant-on (something which is really important to me),
* I have 5-6 hours of battery life,
* Eclipse runs really really smooth,
* XCode runs even smother,
* and every other development related works just fine (and sometimes I think even better as on my MBP)
Con's:
* No glass display (I loved it cause it was way easier to clean than a "plastic" display)
* No keyboard backlight (while this was bothering me at the very beginning, I have to admit that I don't care anymore)
At the bottom-line I want to say that unless you are working on really high computation stuff (like 3D rendering or something) a MBA will do it smoothly. I never encountered anything which I had performance problems with. (If you ask me I would wait a second longer in exchange to carry much less weight with me)
Disclaimer: I don't play any games and try to escape Flash everywhere possible (cause it lets the fan freak out).
All these pros, except weight, is really just down to the SSD - which you can get in any MBP trivially.
1. With an SSD, any current MBP would feel just as snappy.
2. Can't get around that - though I seldom feel my 4lb MBP is too heavy.
3. I've always had this, I call it Sleep.
4. My 13" i5 gets me >7Hrs.
5. Eclipse/XCode - will run just as fast with an SSD. Compile times - no contest, i5 beats the crap out of a 1.3-1.86Ghz C2D.
The i5 in the current 13" MBP is nearly twice as fast as the C2D in the model it replaced - e.g. even faster when compared with the lower clocked MBA processor. Most things in day to day operation are HDD limited. Anything CPU limited will fly on a MBP compared to an MBA - I'm thinking compiling mostly for developers... I suppose web dev doesn't require compiling much - except when using GWT (which i what I use most often...)
Pretty much exactly my experience, except that I'm running a lot more compiles and a lot less photoshop on this 13" MBA.
In particular, if you're upgrading from a machine without SSD, the speed advantages you'll see for things like emacs or compiles of large projects -- things which access lots of small files -- are huge.
This machine replaced a MacBook Pro which was technically its equal in processor speed, but it feels faster in every way (and is a heck of a lot more usable on the train).
Interesting that I seem to be the only 17-inch fan here. I can see the attraction of an MBA, but I prefer having a screen big enough that I can do everything on it without an external monitor, and I don't mind lugging it around at all.
The bigest complement about my MBA is I love(d) my iPad, I took it everywhere, but I gave it to my mum at the weekend because I don't use it anymore since I getting a base 13" Air.
I use my maxed out 13" for all my work now with an external monitor.
It's an interesting change, the only problem I really have is I live in a hot country so the laptop runs hot and kernal_task screws around trying to get the temperature under control.
I'm also thrilled with my MacBook Air 11" running Debian. The installation and configuration took some time though. Since I manage it all in Puppet it's easy to reproduce.
Simply put, the 11" MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever had. I've always appreciated small and light laptops as I travel quite a bit, but this one takes portability to a completely new level. The laptop weights only a kilogram, and is small enough to fit pretty much any bag.
I also hate the display adapters Apple forces us to buy and carry around. I give a lot of presentations, and this is another piece of equipment to accidentally leave home. Why not just go VGA or HDMI?
It's really too bad there is not a matte option for it. I agonized over the MBA vs MBP decision for about a year, and finally got the High-End 15" 2011 MBP model with the matte screen upgrade. Couldn't be happier. Yeah, it's a big hulking beast, but the extra real estate and matte screen are really nice. I don't think I can go back to glossy ever again...
Computing power-wise there are few machines that can't do the job for most people. I recently had a friend get the ASUS 1015B[1] for $289. For everything he does (he's not a developer, rather a policy wonk) it works just fine. He loves the form factor for travel, weight, everything.
But the problem with MBA, netbooks, and laptops in general is that they're less productive for some classes of work. Generally due to the display size/resolution. I find that even a 24" dislay is not adequate to really work at full steam. I need at least 2x24" when doing serious dev work. I can work on my laptop in a pinch, but its like writing a long email with T9. Sure, you can do it, but its not the way you like to operate.
[+] [-] achompas|15 years ago|reply
Man, this is disingenuous. 8GB RAM? As if you can't get it cheaper (or the MBA even offered 8GB RAM as an option)? Or as if the 15" MBP doesn't blow the Air out of the water in every other aspect? I bought a 13" Pro because (a) it's smaller and lighter than the 15" and (b) I don't play PC games.
When we run THAT comparison, well:
13" MBP with 256GB Crucial SSD [0], 4GB RAM, 2.3GHz Core i5 -- $1699
13" MBA with 256GB SSD, 4GB RAM, 2.13 GHz C2D -- $1799
Sure, I don't have a Hi-Res screen (the one Pro feature I wanted on the 13"), but I can actually upgrade my computer in 3 years when 4GB RAM becomes a bottleneck. Now that's a low year-over-year computing cost.
The MacBook Air is an awesome machine, to be sure, but it's awesome because of the built-in SSD--not because of the value it provides.
[0] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148...
[+] [-] r00fus|15 years ago|reply
You can also upgrade your MBP RAM cheaply today (or tomorrow) to 8GB.
Not only does the MB Air not support 8GB, it's soldered on, so you can't upgrade.
[+] [-] pyre|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cushman|15 years ago|reply
The depreciation on Apple laptops is low enough that you can resell it and trade up to the latest refresh once a year for the same cost as trading up once every 3 years. If you're interested in the best bang-for-your-buck and can put up with the hassle, you should definitely think about it.
[+] [-] vacri|15 years ago|reply
Personally, I love my little 12" thinkpad :)
[+] [-] notaddicted|15 years ago|reply
I did the exact same assessment as you 4 months ago and bought the MBA 13" because a) I cared about the high-res screen more than the processor speed, and b) I only expect it to last 2 years so 4GB RAM is enough (insofar as you can ever have enough RAM.)
[+] [-] scott_s|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noduerme|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matthew-wegner|15 years ago|reply
- The OptiBay is $80, but includes a USB enclosure for your SuperDrive to turn it into an external drive: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/
- Cheap clone brackets are ~$20 on eBay, work just as well.
- The original HD bay includes a sudden motion sensor to park the heads on a drop. Ideal setup is to put an SSD in the optical bay and a HD in the internal.
- Battery life doesn't seem affected by two drives. I suspect cpu/video/display power significantly outweighs power from an SSD.
- The optical bay is 3 Gbps, the HD bay is 6 Gbps. Don't bother with the extra cost of new 6 Gbps SSDs if you put it in the optical position.
- If you do this on a new machine, do your boot camp install before you remove the drive. MacBook Pros have some kind of hard-wired device order that makes it impossible to install Windows from an external USB/FireWire optical drive.
I run a 250 GB SandForce SSD + 500 GB 7200rpm drive. SandForce does on-device garbage collection, which helps since OS X has no general-use TRIM support, and I do photo editing on the road so the faster HD is great.
[+] [-] danilocampos|15 years ago|reply
I love my 15" MBP configured as described. No, it's not especially light or sleek compared to a MacBook Air. But it's the fastest, most responsive machine I've ever used in my life. And the processor is a smidge fresher, so I feel better about obsolescence.
One tip if you're going to go the two drive route:
You can symlink heavy files that apps expect to be on your startup disk to your HDD. So in my case, I've symlinked my iTunes movies, iTunes U, iPhoto library, and a couple of other things and store them on the HDD. I don't touch these often and when I do, time isn't of the essence, so there's no point consuming my precious SSD capacity.
[+] [-] rudiger|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ikor|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rodh257|15 years ago|reply
Boy is the 'no boot from USB' thing on the new Macbooks a giant pain in the ass! Installing it is one thing, but last night for some reason Windows wouldn't boot so I needed to to startup repair, had to unscrew the whole thing and put the superdrive back in to do it. Should have been a 5 min operation, wasted a days work (superdrive was at home).
I wonder if I can make a 5gb partition on my main drive to be a windows install disk in case it happens again?
[+] [-] SkyMarshal|15 years ago|reply
How do you have your OSX directories partitioned across the drives? Can you move, say /, to the SSD while keeping /home/media on the larger platter drive? I only know how to do this with Linux, not very familiar with OSX despite it being BSD-based.
[+] [-] jakewalker|15 years ago|reply
http://remiel.info/post/1601242301/making-the-leap-to-ssd-on...
[+] [-] alabut|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenneth_reitz|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matthew-wegner|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wil2k|15 years ago|reply
I'm seriously considering to swap the HDD in my MBP with a SSD and I was still a bit unsure about the TRIM support under OSX.
[+] [-] tricky|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dasil003|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ben1040|15 years ago|reply
I bought the new 13" Air the week after launch and absolutely love it for a dev environment. XCode runs nice and smooth and it now seems to me that an SSD is nearly essential to make Eclipse feel usable.
We're coming up to the 6 month point where with those older laptops I would think "oh God why did I spend $1800 on this," and I still think this is the best computer I've ever owned.
[+] [-] chime|15 years ago|reply
From personal experience I know that I'm more productive on 5 LCD than on 3 LCD or 2 LCD setup. However, I spend a lot more time working on my MBA than I ever did on my desktop and though I work slower, the end result is that I'm overall producing more.
[+] [-] bergie|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrismealy|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brk|15 years ago|reply
http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/
[+] [-] dasil003|15 years ago|reply
I do have a bit of Air envy from time to time, but then I count my blessings that I live in a time where I have a portable workstation that I can use as my primary machine and carry from home to work every day. That is amazing in and of itself.
[+] [-] dadro|15 years ago|reply
Edit:
Best accessory I've purchased http://www.luxurylapdesk.com/index.php
[+] [-] ernestipark|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masnick|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Volscio|15 years ago|reply
Best purchase I've made in a long time, that MBA.
[+] [-] bergie|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ethank|15 years ago|reply
While I love the SSD, and I love the form factor, when working at a desk I really really pine for more RAM and a faster chip. I push the machine super hard on a normal day, not even when doing development.
Now as a portable, nothing can beat the thing, and when working on its 13" screen, it forces you to edit your multitasking so you really don't push it as bad. But when hooked at a 27" screen, you are tempted to multitask more and it gets bogged down.
Next week when the new iMacs come out I'm going to probably get one of those to use as a desktop machine and use the MBA as a portable. With Dropbox and MobileMe and Google sync, this is an easy proposition.
[+] [-] dmauro|15 years ago|reply
The only downsides are if I have a bunch of large files open in Photoshop and Illustrator, I might have to save and close some to keep things running smooth. When I'm plugged into a 27" display, some things are not quite as smooth.
So yeah, I'd rather be working on a faster desktop system (though the benefits would be minimal), but I can close this, bring it home, and continue working with the same workspace.
And the monitor is better than my Dell 22" I have at home.
[+] [-] thenduks|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oemera|15 years ago|reply
Six months ago I had a iMac 24" and a MacBook Pro 13" for studying and portability. I noticed after I bought my MBP that I didn't use my iMac as I thought to be using. Not because it was slow or bad or something. No it was just horrible to synchronize both devices with my work and study related stuff (Yeah I know now better that it is a charm with Dropbox).
While I was deciding if I should sell my iMac I decided to sell both iMac AND my MBP. Why, you ask? My MBP was just fine but sometimes I had to carry a heavy books plus MBP with me and this was why my back was hurting. So I decided to switch to something lighter and faster (and yes my MBA is way faster than my MBP ever was).
After selling both devices I bought a MBA with 128GB SSD and 4GB Ram and happier than ever before. This was one of the best decisions I made in my environment. And if anything happens to my MBA I will order a new one with thinking a moment about it.
Pro's:
* It is very fast,
* it is light as nothing else,
* I have instant-on (something which is really important to me),
* I have 5-6 hours of battery life,
* Eclipse runs really really smooth,
* XCode runs even smother,
* and every other development related works just fine (and sometimes I think even better as on my MBP)
Con's:
* No glass display (I loved it cause it was way easier to clean than a "plastic" display)
* No keyboard backlight (while this was bothering me at the very beginning, I have to admit that I don't care anymore)
At the bottom-line I want to say that unless you are working on really high computation stuff (like 3D rendering or something) a MBA will do it smoothly. I never encountered anything which I had performance problems with. (If you ask me I would wait a second longer in exchange to carry much less weight with me)
Disclaimer: I don't play any games and try to escape Flash everywhere possible (cause it lets the fan freak out).
[+] [-] alsocasey|15 years ago|reply
1. With an SSD, any current MBP would feel just as snappy. 2. Can't get around that - though I seldom feel my 4lb MBP is too heavy. 3. I've always had this, I call it Sleep. 4. My 13" i5 gets me >7Hrs. 5. Eclipse/XCode - will run just as fast with an SSD. Compile times - no contest, i5 beats the crap out of a 1.3-1.86Ghz C2D.
The i5 in the current 13" MBP is nearly twice as fast as the C2D in the model it replaced - e.g. even faster when compared with the lower clocked MBA processor. Most things in day to day operation are HDD limited. Anything CPU limited will fly on a MBP compared to an MBA - I'm thinking compiling mostly for developers... I suppose web dev doesn't require compiling much - except when using GWT (which i what I use most often...)
[+] [-] jimwise|15 years ago|reply
In particular, if you're upgrading from a machine without SSD, the speed advantages you'll see for things like emacs or compiles of large projects -- things which access lots of small files -- are huge.
This machine replaced a MacBook Pro which was technically its equal in processor speed, but it feels faster in every way (and is a heck of a lot more usable on the train).
[+] [-] calebhicks|15 years ago|reply
I have a 24" monitor at my office, and a 27" iMac (my wife's) that I use as a second display for my MBP.
Best of both worlds. Speed, mobility, and big screens when I need 'em.
[+] [-] _Fil_|15 years ago|reply
I transfer every day large files between my mac and my pc or NAS and the transfer rate would kill me.
[+] [-] guictx|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ScottBurson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beck5|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benologist|15 years ago|reply
It's an interesting change, the only problem I really have is I live in a hot country so the laptop runs hot and kernal_task screws around trying to get the temperature under control.
[+] [-] bergie|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rufo|15 years ago|reply
Are you pretty much always at high CPU utilization, or is Ubuntu's power management of Mac hardware that poor?
[+] [-] uggedal|15 years ago|reply
Here is the high level Puppet code to configure everything to my liking: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/379663/
[+] [-] JCB_K|15 years ago|reply
I also hate the display adapters Apple forces us to buy and carry around. I give a lot of presentations, and this is another piece of equipment to accidentally leave home. Why not just go VGA or HDMI?
That wouldn't really go together :)
[+] [-] nwomack|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenjackson|15 years ago|reply
But the problem with MBA, netbooks, and laptops in general is that they're less productive for some classes of work. Generally due to the display size/resolution. I find that even a 24" dislay is not adequate to really work at full steam. I need at least 2x24" when doing serious dev work. I can work on my laptop in a pinch, but its like writing a long email with T9. Sure, you can do it, but its not the way you like to operate.
[1] http://www.asus.com/Eee/Eee_PC/Eee_PC_1015B/