New MBA 13", good for a college student?

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Chandler, Arizona
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Macbook Pro 2012; Intel i5, Intel HD 4000, 500gb HDD, 13'' screen
I am happy to see that a new MacBook Air has just been recently released. I am planning to buy a laptop for college real soon. My original plan was to buy a MacBook Pro 13" w/ i5 and buy an Ipad 2 (64GB) to take to class. However, now that the MacBook Air is out, my mind has been changed. I could still store music, games, and work related things on the Air and thanks to the new CPU, daily task should be faster. The illuminated keyboard is nice since they bought that back. Although their isn't any benchmarks, is it worth getting the MacBook Air 13" maxed out (1.8ghz i7 and 256GB HDD)?
 
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2011 MacBook Air, i5 27" IMac, 2010 21.5" IMac, 2010 Mini, 2011 13" MBP, IPhone 4, Airport Extreme
More than enough to satisfy your college needs. Would recommend having an external for backups and storage of files you don't need on a daily basis. The new Airs are Sweeeeeeet!
 
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2011 27in iMac i5 3.1GHz, AMD 6970, iPhone 4, Wi-Fi iPad 2
The MBP may still have better performance (haven't seen benchmarks comparing the two yet), though the disk performance will be far slower on the MBP unless you get an SSD for it. That said, I really don't think the 1.8 i7 is worth it, because I think the i5 1.7 also has hyperthreading, and the extra 100 MHz isn't going to make a huge difference. My vote is either top end MBA stock config w/ apple care, or MBP with iPad 16 or 32, (64 is utter overkill, even if you need music/movies, theyre are plenty of streaming apps available)
 
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i5 doesn't have hyperthreading. The new MBA's have had geekbench done to them and according to that, they are on par with the 2010 MBPs.
 
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i5 doesn't have hyperthreading. The new MBA's have had geekbench done to them and according to that, they are on par with the 2010 MBPs.
Amazing how wrong people are isn't it?

But yea, I would say to get the baseline 13 inch MBA and an external hard drive to store your data. That would give you the best gang for your buck, so to speak. Keep in mind that it isn't upgradable (only the SSD) so if you want more RAM in the future you're just going to have to get another machine.

I would also suggest getting the 13 inch as you get the 7 hour battery opposed to the 4.5 hours every is getting with the 11 inch.
 

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