I now have the $1199 macbook air and realized the for the same price I can get a 13 inch macbook pro. I am a college student and love the portability of my 11inch air, however it IS my primary computer, and I'm wondering if down the line I'm going to wish it had more space/power. All I really do, however, is write essays and use the internet. No gaming, photoshop, finalcut or other video editing, and I don't even listen to itunes that much. My iTunes takes up around 14 GB. The main perks I see for getting the pro are the memory (for long-term accumulation of files), the slightly larger screen which is sometimes nice to have in order to have multiple windows open simultaneously, the CD drive, and potentially the battery life. So what do you think, is it worth sacrificing my beloved and portable air for the pro?
Update:Thanks so much for all the advice. Basically, I LOVE my 11 inch and would like to keep it, but my brother pointed out that while it may be fine now, as it ages it will become slow/problematic, and since the macbook pro has better specs (regardless of whether or not I notice a different between that and a new macbook air), if I get the macbook pro, it will age less. Thoughts?
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Verified answer
I am afraid YES. Because in a couple years, every macbook air user will complain about the performance of their laptop. The 1.6 Ghz dual core is not fast, this laptop was only designed so that you can check your emails quickly or do some short amount of work on your laptop. Now if you are a type of person who is always on the computer, then macbook pro is the best laptop to purchase. In the end, the performance will definitely benefit you. Don't worry about portability and battery life, 13" macbook pro does well in those areas.
EDIT:
I am sorry but Magus doesn't really know what it is saying. 1.6 may be a second generation but its not that powerful. We used to have a macbook air but based on my family member's experience, its not that fast, after 3-4 months you will start noticing its weakness. Its only the best laptop for portability. I would spend the extra and get the macbook pro 13" and have more power that will do you good for 7 or more years. Don't forget that lion is a processor/memory hogger. When you try multitasking or running anything intensive it will eat battery life very fast. Also the SSD 128GB fills up fast (depending on how much data you have.
EDIT 2:
Why would you want a slow computer, you are paying so much for a mac, why not just pay a bit more for extra performance that will do you good for 7+ years? I am sorry but if you prefer macbook air then go ahead and buy one, you will soon realize how fast the 1.6Ghz processor actually, stop paying attention to 2 generation, pay attention to its numbers (its hardware specs). a 1.6Ghz has many limitations. If you use your laptop almost in everyday basis, macbook air is not the best option, macbook pro is.
EDIT 3:
depends from people to people, from my experience, air isn't that fast. It seemed faster with snow leopard. You can say its fast but I will hold on to my experience, I don't think a 1.6Ghz is fast. For basic work it may be but as a everyday computing (being on computer for hours), its not the best.
I hate to say that the first poster...doesn't really know what they're talking about.
Even if the processor in the Pro is better (which it is, but not by that much)...it's not going to surf the web or write essays any better than the Air. You can use an old Pentium M laptop and still have absolutely no problem surfing the web or writing essays or listening to music or whatever - I would know.
If you absolutely need extra storage, you're better off getting an external hard drive or NAS anyway:
-It'll be safer to store stuff long-term - since if your laptop or the hard drive fails, you still have the external
-You're not slowing down the hard drive by overloading it - when you reach about 85% capacity on a hard drive, putting extra files will start to noticeably make your laptop less responsive
-You can get a lot more storage out of a 3.5" external drive than a 2.5" laptop drive - as far as I know, it wasn't until recently when 1TB drives became available for laptops, while 3.5" 3TB desktop drives have existed for a while
-If you go the route of getting a NAS, you can access the data on your laptop (or any other computer) through an internet connection, anywhere in the world
CD drive? Personally, all of my music and games are digital, so Windows installations are honestly the only thing I use my (external) CD drive for. I mean, I can see how beneficial a CD drive can be, but you have to ask yourself whether you need one that much that you have to have it with you all the time.
As for screen size, the Air you have now will actually be /better/ for using multiple windows than the Pro. The Air's screen resolution is 1366x768, while the 13" Pro is 1280x800 - so as a result, you physically have more pixels available on the Air, meaning more screen space is available and everything will appear MUCH sharper than on the Pro. If you honestly need a bigger screen or better resolution, just plug one in to the laptop.
Battery life - I can see the extra 2 hours being pretty useful, but between the low-voltage processor and flash memory on the Air, putting it in standby will be a pleasure - basically instant-off and instant-off at any moment, with little battery loss while in standby. Yeah, the Pro has standby too, but it isn't as efficient (as far as I know), and certainly not as quick unless you upgrade it to a SSD.
EDIT: Yet again, showing that you don't know what you're talking about. Take a look at this:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4528/the-2011-macboo...
Obviously, it's weaker than the Pro's, as you can see, but it beats the last-gen Air by a /lot/, and is usually around the performance of the previous-gen Pro.
Let me ask you this now - would you go and say that the previous-gen Pro is weak by any means? Of course not, it's still a very formidable and capable computer, just as the Pro generation before it too.
I've extensively used a 13" Air for a few months now, almost filling the 128GB SSD (just to see how it affects performance - and it's not noticeable), and doing a lot of heavy multitasking (running Sims 3 (a pretty unoptimized and RAM-heavy game), Photoshop, Firefox, and a few other small apps - and it doesn't slow down at all when you minimize one or use the other, and individual app performance is still close to running it without other apps) - and it doesn't take a genius to say that it's definitely good enough for such basic activities. Lion is obviously heavier on resources than previous installments, but a 11" Air can easily run it with the base CPU and 2GB of RAM - if it didn't, Apple wouldn't sell said Air with Lion installed - Apple is in the business of providing a smooth and functional experience to the customer.
The ONLY reason Lea here would ever need the Pro's power is if by some disaster, Microsoft Word, Safari, and iTunes all sloppily code their newest versions to only run on the Pro. Internet browsing, word processing, and music isn't ever going to need anything more than Pentium 4 or older. Period.
EDIT 2: (Had to delete some stuff to make room)
The Air is NOT slow. I don't know how to better explain it. Ask anybody who knows anything about computers - Ghz doesn't mean much nowadays. We're not talking about Pentium 4's where a 4Ghz one is much better than a 2Ghz one. I can guarantee you that even if the processor was 1.3Ghz or less, it'd STILL be better than a lot of processors out there. Let me guess, you also think 8GB of RAM is going to really increase performance over 4GB too, right?
And you have yet to prove how a computer any faster than the Air is going to benefit in word processing, web browsing, and music. And if the Air isn't fast enough for basic use, then you're basically saying that just about any laptop before the Air isn't fast enough for basic use...which just isn't true. And if you looked at the site I linked, you'd know that.
Macbook pro is a better computer.