Considering replacing my 15" MBP with 13" Air

H

HDClown

Limp Gawd
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Nov 30, 2004
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I have a 2 year olf 2.4ghz/4gb RAM/5400rpm HDD 15" MBP. It's the last generations of pre-unibody models. My laptop supplements my C2Q PC Desktop. I do all my heavy lifting on the desktop because that's where my 24" IPS LCD is, and it's just faster. My laptop is a couch and travel machine. When It's on my couch and travelling, it's pretty much web, e-mail, office apps, and watching video. I'll do some extremely basic photo edits (resizes and crops) when I'm travelling so I can throw stuff online. Other then that, I don't demand a lot from my laptop.

I've been doing a bunch of travelling and it's not going to slow down, and the Air's have peaked my internet in cutting down weight when I travel. The 13" model with 1.83ghz proc, 128G Flash, and 4G RAM seems like it could fully replace my 15" MBP when I consider what I do on my notebook. It has the same screen resolution (good), but it's glossy (bad, I prefer matte). The lack of internal optical drive doens't bother me. I sometime end up in buildings with no WiFi, so I'll need to carry the USB Ethernet adaptor around, so that's a slight annoyance.

Other than that, I'm really trying to figure out 1.83ghz vs 2.4ghz and what it really means to me. There's also the flash vs mechanical HDD. That makes a difference since I've got a slow 5400rpm drive. (I've been thinking about SSD upgrade but have not done it as of yet).

I figure that I could get around 800-900 for my MBP, which means the cost of the Air ends up being $600-700, which is much more reasonable. But, that kind of money could buy me someting like an Asus EeePC 1215N or a 13" Acer TimelineX model with an i5 in it too. I bring these options up because I don't NEED to have OSX, so I'm also weighing against these other cheaper options as an addition to my MBP, as opposed to a replacement.

Based on reviews I've read of some of these other higher priced nettops/lower end ultraportables, I know the overall package of feel and durability won't be the same, and that effects my total end-user experience, so that's another variable here in the mix.

Thoughts?
 
I had the 1st gen Air during my last year of undergrad and I thought it was the perfect machine except for the lack of a GPU with some oomph. I switched over to the more recent 13" MBP at the start of grad school, and man, I wish I waited a little longer for the next revision. An SSD makes everything much quicker (have a G1 Intel), and I bet the high-res screen is great looking.Between the Air and the 13 MBP, I had Netbook and Acer Timeline with a SU7300, but they couldn't compete (for me at least) when it came to usability and build quality.

If portability is king for you, I can't see anything really beating it if your prefer using OS X and have a supplemental rig at home.
 
You should be able to get more than 800-900. I managed to get $950 on ebay this month for the mid 2007 MBP 2.2/4gb/120gb that was the model before yours. Of course ebay and paypal take a large cut but if you live in a city unlike myself you could easily use craigslist or the local paper to sell it and probably still get as much without the fees.

I got rid of it to replace it with a Mac Mini upgraded to 8Gb of RAM and a Intel x-25m g2 160gb ssd as I found the MBP to be way too loud and hot for anything even trivial as far as work is concerned and I have learned I'd much rather have a separate desktop and laptop to avoid unplugging so many cables just to go somewhere. With the release of the new 13" MBA I am pretty much in the same boat as you and it definitely seems better than an iPad for my needs as I own an iPhone and need to be able to use the terminal, virtual machines and other apps an iPad cannot run for SCADA and IT work. I cannot emphasize enough the difference a good SSD makes coming from a 5400rpm drive. Everything is so much more responsive and lightning fast. For the build quality, aluminum chassis, ability to run OS X as well as any other OS, full keyboard unlike many netbooks, a c2d instead of an Atom and the incredibly small dimensions and weight not to mention the just plain sexy looks I would recommend going with the MBA which is what I plan to do myself.
 
My 15" MBP is not in mint condition. It took a 2 foot fall and ding a corner. It's all cosmetic though, but I'm sure it will effect some resale. Haven't really checked to see what they are going for though, It was an $1800 machine when newly purchased in Nov 2008. If I got $900-1000 for it, I'd be perfectly happy, but more would be even better.

I had an iPad for 2 months, ended up selling it. Loved it for what I used it for, but wanted to cash out and get full value back (ok, 95%) because iPad 2 with a camera/retina display (2 obvious upgrades) will KILL iPad 1 resale. The iPad was strictly a supplenent to a laptop for me, and not a replacement. It was perfect for when I didn't want to deal with the weight of my MBP just to read a website or check e-mail.

The 11.6" MBA is at the right size/weight where I think I could see myself not caring about having iPad 2, but I don't know that I could go with the 11.6" MBA as my ONLY laptop either. I'm used laptops with 1440x900 res for the past 4 years and going down to 1366x768 is a big deal. When I compared 11.6" and 13.3" MBA side-by-side from a resolution standpoint, it's kind of like "wow, that's a big difference". Then I look at the processor speed and wonder to myself, can I get 2 years out of a 1.4 or 1.6ghz processor?

So the 13.3" MBA seems to make the most sense overall. The bigges tthing I'm trying to determine now is this: Can I get 18-24 months out of a 1.83ghz C2D proc given OS X 10.7 coming out, and my need to do some Windows virtualization for my job.
 
HDClown said:
My 15" MBP is not in mint condition. It took a 2 foot fall and ding a corner. It's all cosmetic though, but I'm sure it will effect some resale. Haven't really checked to see what they are going for though, It was an $1800 machine when newly purchased in Nov 2008. If I got $900-1000 for it, I'd be perfectly happy, but more would be even better.

...

The 11.6" MBA is at the right size/weight where I think I could see myself not caring about having iPad 2, but I don't know that I could go with the 11.6" MBA as my ONLY laptop either. I'm used laptops with 1440x900 res for the past 4 years and going down to 1366x768 is a big deal. When I compared 11.6" and 13.3" MBA side-by-side from a resolution standpoint, it's kind of like "wow, that's a big difference". Then I look at the processor speed and wonder to myself, can I get 2 years out of a 1.4 or 1.6ghz processor?

So the 13.3" MBA seems to make the most sense overall. The bigges tthing I'm trying to determine now is this: Can I get 18-24 months out of a 1.83ghz C2D proc given OS X 10.7 coming out, and my need to do some Windows virtualization for my job.
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Mine was mint with not even a scuff with a recently replaced battery.

I would definitely go with the 13" over the 11.6" for the resolution and aspect ratio. 16:9 on the 11.6" just is not enough vertical for working or reading imo.

I wouldn't worry much about the processor unless you need to do lots of compiling, encoding or any other CPU bound tasks. I'd be more worried about only having 4gb of ram and hitting swap on a SSD (bad for life span) for virtual machines particularly if you need to run a guest Windows OS newer than XP.
 
WIth Office 2011 Mac, I eliminated a huge need for running Windows. And with SecureCRT Mac finally being out there, that eliminated another. Because I've been so annoyed with my VM (XP previously and now Win7) bogging down so much on my MBP, I try to never run them. So If I need a windows only tool (like VMware VI Client) I try to just RDP into a box and run it there. That's been working out fairly well. So I don't necessarily need Windows apps native. I was planning to do dual boot and just boot into Windows if I needed to do work in there.
 
I'd go with the 13" MBP over a MBA. It's faster, has better battery life, has more ports, has a built-in SuperDrive, the hard drive and memory are user upgradable, has an illuminated keyboard, etc. All that, and it cost less to.
 
There's no point in going from my 15" MBP to a 13" MBP. The actual felt weight savings isn't there (my wife has one, I've spent a lot of time doing side-by-side with my 15"). The lower screen resolution is also a big downgrade for me.
 
I can't tell you what the best choice is for you but I can tell you that the 1.86 C2D is a great processor. I have one on my Thinkpad X200s and I've used it for quite a few CPU intensive tasks. The MBA should feel even faster with the SSD.
 
HDClown said:
There's no point in going from my 15" MBP to a 13" MBP. The actual felt weight savings isn't there (my wife has one, I've spent a lot of time doing side-by-side with my 15"). The lower screen resolution is also a big downgrade for me.
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That would be the biggest trade off for me. I've got a 13" macbook pro and after a while, I wish that I had a 15" screen. Nevermind any of the other specs....
 
cbags101 said:
That would be the biggest trade off for me. I've got a 13" macbook pro and after a while, I wish that I had a 15" screen. Nevermind any of the other specs....
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Don't forget though that the 13" macbook air has a 1440x900 screen. So the usable screen space is the same as a 15" Macbook (the pixels are just smaller).

The only thing that bothers me about the new Macbooks is that Apple didn't include USB 3.0 ports in the design. Probably doesn't make much of a difference now, but in a few years I have a feeling not having USB 3.0 on your laptop is going to suck.
 
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-11-13inch-reviewed

Posted this in another thread but Anand wrote up a great write up. Go to the performance page and it'll show the benchmarks on how it performs against 2008 macbook pro 15 2.4. In photoshop, it's 50% slower in image touchups but for importing RAW images it's the same.
From a productivity standpoint, the working space is the same, 1440X960, and higher DPI so it's sharper. The SSD is much faster than the HD for general usage, and it is lighter. Guess it's up to you. From a productivity standpoint you're getting a slightly slower computer, but get weight savings, 7 hours of battery life for light usage, and a speedier system during general use. Sounds like a win/win considering your question.
 
Harry1969 said:
The 11.6" MBA is just a really expensive netbook.
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Except that it is really not.

It's in the same vein as the Sony TZ, Alienware m11x and the like. It's an ultra-portable.

A netbook has a Atom (or similar) processor. The 11.6 MBA has a 1.4 (or 1.6) C2D ULV. That is a faster processor then in the m11x (at least the base one, which is pretty similar in price)

A netbook doesn't have dedicated graphics (baring a few very unusual examples, like the ASUS 1201n, but that's a blurring of ultraportable/netbook IMO)

Netbooks don't have 64gb SSD's.

Most netbooks are actually thicker and heavier then an 11.6 MBA, especially if they are getting 5-6 hours of life.

Compare apples to apples if you are going to compare things. Apples to Banana's doesn't make any sense.
 
Zumino Zufeilon said:
Except that it is really not.

It's in the same vein as the Sony TZ, Alienware m11x and the like. It's an ultra-portable.

A netbook has a Atom (or similar) processor. The 11.6 MBA has a 1.4 (or 1.6) C2D ULV. That is a faster processor then in the m11x (at least the base one, which is pretty similar in price)

A netbook doesn't have dedicated graphics (baring a few very unusual examples, like the ASUS 1201n, but that's a blurring of ultraportable/netbook IMO)

Netbooks don't have 64gb SSD's.

Most netbooks are actually thicker and heavier then an 11.6 MBA, especially if they are getting 5-6 hours of life.

Compare apples to apples if you are going to compare things. Apples to Banana's doesn't make any sense.
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While you make some valid points and I agree with you, you are wrong that the 11" MBA is hot. Apple seems to have solved the overheating issues. Now they are just slightly warm to the touch.
 
Tomahawk said:
I wouldn't go that far. The m11x has a switchable GT335M GPU with 1GB of dedicated RAM, and it's system memory is expandable to 8GB instead of forever stuck at 2GB.
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It is also twice as heavy and even thicker than a normal Macbook Pro. Obviously it is way thicker than an Air. 4GB is also a factory option, and while the SSD is in a custom package there are already aftermarket ones out there that can be installed.

Tradeoffs! The m11x is a good machine but hardly one I would compare with the MBA or any other ultraslim notebook since they all serve very different goals.
 
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