New to Mac, looking for a laptop

[hallmr09]

Hi all,
I am looking to get a new laptop to replace the Dell that I currently own. I am trying to decide between the macbook pro and the macbook air. For the pro I would get the base 13" (2.5 GHz) with 8gb of ram. If I got the air I would get the 13" plus 8gb of ram and the 128 gb SSD. I'm going into my last year of college and will be going to grad school, so I figure that this is a good time to upgrade. Here's what I would mainly be using it for: web browsing, word and powerpoint, running programs like Mathematica, MatLab, MathCad, and VMware view client, etc, and watching videos online occasionally.
I don't really play games on my computer or store music or movies on my HDD (I use Amazon Cloud) so I don't care about the size of the hard drive.
I would just like to get some opinions as to which computer you guys think I should go with.
I would also like to know how hot they get. I don't like to put my Dell on my lap because it gets quite warm even when I'm just on the web.

Thank you in advance.

 

[pigoo3]

I would also like to know how hot they get. I don't like to put my Dell on my lap because it gets quite warm even when I'm just on the web.

Both can get hot...but usually not when just web surfing (but may get hot when playing games or watching videos).

- Nick

 

[John F]

I would go with the Air + 1TB external USB drive (and I have a 15" Mac Pro). Meanwhile, load you Dell with Ubuntu 12 (Linux). It won't do everything the Mac will do, but it is fast and reliable.

 

[ipadder474]

Mac Book Pro. the one with an optical drive.