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spiff72 · Aug 21, 2011, 01:09 PM

Hey all,

I have been rocking an early 2008 17" MBP with the high res screen, and I recently decided to to sell it and "upgrade".

I ended up with the 13" MBA for budgetary reasons. I sold the MBP to a student for probably less than it was worth ($650). And I returned a Xoom for another $500 to help fund the new machine.

I use the machine mainly for surfing, email, Aperture, and a little bit of iMovie stuff.

I have messed around in Aperture a bit with the machine and so far it seems to meet my needs. I haven't yet tried to use iMovie on it to do any editing yet.

My concern is the lack of ability to bump the RAM beyond 4GB, the integrated graphics, and the dual core processor being at the bottom end of the current lineup of machines. I still have a week and a half to return/exchange the MBA.

I love this form factor of this machine, but I know it has its compromises. The 13" MBP doesn't seem much better from a performance standpoint (other than a faster CPU). I would have to step up to the 15" to get dedicated graphics.

With the education discount, I got the MBA for $1550, and I could get the 15" MBP for $1700. The only issue I have with the MBP is the lower end GPU than the high-end 15" (and the lack of SSD). I might even consider bumping the resolution of the 15" to the high res for an extra $90.

What are your thoughts? As I said, it seems like this machine would be OK for now, but I worry about what it would be like in 3-4 years. Should I just bite the bullet and pay the extra couple hundred?

Also is the real world battery life any better on the MBP?

Thanks in advance!
Jeff

Waragainstsleep · Aug 21, 2011, 01:56 PM

Battery life is definitely better on the Pro. For an extra $150 I'd get the 15" Pro personally, can always add the SSD and more RAM later on.

spiff72 · Aug 21, 2011, 03:51 PM

The more I think about it I think you are right. Maybe I was just looking for someone to agree with me.

Maybe $150 will buy me another 1-2 years of useful life.

Waragainstsleep · Aug 21, 2011, 04:22 PM

Seems like the better deal to me.

CharlesS · Aug 21, 2011, 11:46 PM

The MBP will let you easily open the case and upgrade the HDD/SSD and RAM. This, alone, will increase its longevity beyond what the MBA will provide.

spiff72 · Aug 22, 2011, 09:01 AM

OK - I am convinced.

The Air is going back for a 15" MBP (high res if the local Apple Store stocks them - which I doubt).

Thanks everyone!

PeteWK · Aug 23, 2011, 05:47 AM

I'd get the Air in a heartbeat. As a matter of fact, starting back in school (I'm an old dude) for MA #2 I'm going to pick up an Air in a couple of weeks. One caveat, though, I'm typing this on my 24 inch iMac with 2.4 Core 2 Duo. Four year old machine that's still amazingly fast. If I only had one computer, I might be tempted to go with a Pro though probably a 17 inch.

Pete

SierraDragon · Aug 23, 2011, 11:11 AM

The MBA is a very cool box but IMO the 15" MBP will overall be a much better choice if it is your sole computer.

An MBA is not a good choice as a main Aperture box. For work involving images you need more screen real estate, and adding an external display will further suck performance from the limiting integrated graphics.

HTH

-Allen

Eug · Aug 23, 2011, 11:38 AM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

The MBP will let you easily open the case and upgrade the HDD/SSD and RAM. This, alone, will increase its longevity beyond what the MBA will provide.

Indeed. My 2009 MacBook Pro 13" was feeling a bit slow, but I just installed a 128 GB SSD and it feels like a brand new machine. At the time, SSDs were horrendously expensive. Nowadays good 128 GB models are under $200.

The other issue is my 2 GB RAM, but 4 GB is now on the way. At the time 4 GB was expensive. My recent order for 4 GB cost me all of 27 bucks. (I don't need 8 GB in this one.)

sdilley14 · Aug 24, 2011, 12:47 AM

Holy cow...great price on that 17" MBP!

spiff72 · Aug 24, 2011, 12:50 PM

Originally Posted by sdilley14

Holy cow...great price on that 17" MBP!

Yes - the guy at the Apple store said the same thing - might have been able to get $800-900 for it. I had it posted here at the marketplace on the MacNN forums, and didn't get a single response.

I ended up selling it via my corporate intranet ads. I wish I had asked for more, but it is too late now!

Anyway, I have returned the MBA and picked up the 15" 2.2GHz . It is hard to tell yet how much the better processor and graphics card are helping me, but I let it chunk away "processing" my Aperture library overnight (I used the migration assistant to transfer the apps and data I had installed on the MBA via a Time Machine backup). I guess this approach forced Aperture to re-process all of the images (about 6000 RAW photos), so it was dog slow while it went through that. The processor was getting pretty high usage at times, but the big hurt appeared to be a lot of disk reading/writing as it did its work. I also noticed I was getting pageouts, so I ordered 8GB of ram last night from Crucial.

I haven't had much time to play with it today, but it definitely doesn't boot up as fast as the MBA!

I knew this would be the case though, without having that fast SSD under the hood.

Maybe when SSD prices come down I will drop a 256GB (or bigger) in there!

Thanks
Jeff

cgc · Aug 24, 2011, 03:06 PM

I like the new MBA but don't see it as day-to-day use laptop, more of a very capable travel laptop.