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New Apple MacBook Air 11" & 13"


Riz
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Will it make a noticable difference? Oh yes, definitely. It isn't a cheao upgrade but I find it worth the money.

I put 8Gb in my i7 MBP and to be honest haven't noticed any difference but I don't really do much so it that's likely to need that much RAM. If I were using it for running VMWare then it would definitely have been worth it but as it was a cheap upgrade I went for it anyway.

I agree with your thoughts too about the 8GB ram upgrade not costing much (£75ish), think I will just go for it anyway.

As for upgrading the standard 320GB HDD to a 128/256GB SDD I think I will hold out for prices to drop a little, a 256GB SDD is coming out around £495.

It is hard to copy data off the standard HDD to a SSD drive, I am wondering if i`ll need a caddy or something?

I will be using a 1TB WD USB 2.0 HDD as my time capsule device, does OSX have the ability to copy the entire drive and itself onto a external USB drive?

I could then install a new OSX on the SSD drive then just restore off the USB drive?

I`m collecting my MacBook on monday, well excited..... oooo that unibody oooooo

Riz :D

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You could use something like Super Duper! or Carbon Cloner to image one drive onto the other but yeah, you'd need a caddy.

When I put a bigger hard drive in my Macbook a few years ago I did a full backup in Time Machine, booted from the OS X DVD, created a partition on the new HD and then told it to restore the Time Machine backup. It took a few hours but it worked fine.

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Yes they're very good, but do you need 256gb?

The whole Crucial range (64, 128 and 256) can be bought on eBuyer.com and you'll see the reviews on there - but the 64gb and 128gb would be my choice. Ultimately what will you be running off the SSD. 256gb is a hell of a lot of space and if you could manage on less I think the others are a better buy.

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Your right, I will have to think about my useage etc.

The 64GB can be bought for as little as £85, 128GB £175 and the 256GB for £350, big jumps in price.

I have noticed that the write speeds inscrease as you go up the sizes, 75mb, 140mb and 215mb.

I will do some research tonight and see what the best price vs performance option is for me, your right, 256GB is a hell of a lot.

Riz :)

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OCZ's are generally accepted to be superior, yes. Mac has one.

Yup, I have far better performance on my OCZ units than I do on my Crucial ones - although not massively so in real world differences. OCZ benchmarks better than anything else I've tried.

in terms of drive failures, I've had a total of 3. 1 x Corsair unit, 1 x Crucial, and 1 x OCZ. But, to be fair, I absolutely cane my drives, and they're often moved around between units too.

OSX doesn't support TRIM so it's irrelevant. I will say the write-levelling in the OCZ units seems far superior to the Crucial units - certainly on the ones I have. I'd go with OCZ every time now.

Incidentally Riz, those Crucial units you linked to show the performance when connected to a SATA 6 interface - no Apple units have SATA 6, only SATA 3. While a SATA 6 drive will work on a SATA 3 bus, it's often slower than the quoted figures.

Go with the OCZ +++

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I'm going to sell my i5 MacBook pro and get a 13" Air with 4gb and 256gb flash drive.

I have had a 15" MBP for the last 4 years and have loved it, but now have an iMac for my music stuff and after living with the iPad for a few weeks realised that I don't really need a laptop, iPad and iMac, however don't want to be without one altogether.

So hoping I am not going to regret it.

Did you buy yours used Riz? Can I ask what you paid for it?

Mine is the 15" with 320gb drive, 4th ram and glossy screen, was £1520 I think, just wondering what I will realistically get for it.

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I was toying with the idea of buying a MacBook Air too but unlike yourself I don't own a decent iMac as my main machine, so going the MacBook Pro route covered all bases as the i5 is pretty ok performance wise.

Another factor was the price, I managed to bag this less than 5 month old as new example for £1400 this included AppleCare until Sept 6th 2013 and a slip case. Also the original receipt was included for my peace of mind.

I think I got a good deal, their is currently somebody selling a MacBook Pro i5 2.4Ghz on AVForums for a shade over £1200/1300 at the moment.

I have recently upgraded my RAM to 8GB and will be looking to buy a OCZ SSD drive soon.

I am really impressed with the speed and swiftness of how the applications load but this was expected as I came from a Netbook running Windows XP :D

I'm not sure you'll regret going to a MacBook Air as they do run pretty fast, the flash storage is a big aspect of this, if your happy with the lack of optical drive, smaller screen size, no backlit keyboard and spending more of its sleek design then its all good :D

Riz :)

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Optical drive is fine, never used the one in this so far, screen size is fine, will go 13" and that is now 1440x900, lack of backlit keyboard?? Hmmm, strangely this is the one thing that worries me most, I do tend to use this in bed in the dark and I love the backlit keyboard, I can touch type no problem but for some reason as soon as I know I am typing in the dark my brain stops!! :D

CEX do Applecare for £90 for Macbook Pros, so I was thinking of buying that and then selling this for £1295 with 2.5 years of warranty, so seems like that is do able.

Cheers bud.

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Optical drive is fine, never used the one in this so far, screen size is fine, will go 13" and that is now 1440x900, lack of backlit keyboard?? Hmmm, strangely this is the one thing that worries me most, I do tend to use this in bed in the dark and I love the backlit keyboard, I can touch type no problem but for some reason as soon as I know I am typing in the dark my brain stops!! :D

CEX do Applecare for £90 for Macbook Pros, so I was thinking of buying that and then selling this for £1295 with 2.5 years of warranty, so seems like that is do able.

Cheers bud.

I know Mac has gone from a MacBook Pro to a Air and he had nothing but praise for it. Applecare does seem to help with selling them from what I've seen so would be good to go down that route and £1295 seems pretty reasonable to me, just remember that people do tend to knock down prices to secure a bargain.... the seller was originally selling it for £1550 and I knocked him down to £1400, was well chuffed :D

Riz :)

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AppleCare makes a difference.

Anyone who has ever taken an unwarranted iMac or Macbook to an Authorised Apple Centre for repair will tell you they wish they had it - the second they find out how much they rip you off for repairs.

iMac 24 512mb nVidia card - replacement card....£385.

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I haven't gone from a MBP to Air Riz - I couldn't.

I have an i7 MBP with 8Gb/240Gb SSD and 1 TB HD. That's my work biatch.

My MBA is my travel/meeting buddy to replace my iPad. Runs all office apps and a virtualised copy of Win7 Ultimate. It's great, but it's nowhere near a match for the i7 in terms of pure grunt.

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AppleCare makes a difference.

Anyone who has ever taken an unwarranted iMac or Macbook to an Authorised Apple Centre for repair will tell you they wish they had it - the second they find out how much they rip you off for repairs.

iMac 24 512mb nVidia card - replacement card....£385.

I rarely keep my kit long enough to get out of warranty :uhoh:

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Hehe...... ahhhh

well I do like the MacBook Air 13" and in all fairness the i5 I have is probably too much for what I need at the moment.

But think about the future it will last me longer including giving me that extra grunt if I need it.

Well impressed with it so far, playing 1080p YouTube videos, pure class.

Opening and closing office applications with ease.

I'm a Apple sheep now and think I will be for a long time to come.. beeh beeh.

Riz :D

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