13" Air or 13" MBP

Switched about 18 months ago, treated myself to an imac and gotta say i love it. However my only laptop an aging Gateway has now bit the dust, so the time has come to replace it.
Since i now fully prefer mac i've narrowed my choice down to the 13" air or the 13" MBP, im leaning towards the air on the basis of the ssd and the better screen res, was just after a bit of feedback from the good people on here who own any of the above.
I wont be doing anything demanding, just general web browsing, email etc, I realise an ipad would do this, but dont fancy one, mainly due to the lack of flash, small screen, and no keyboard.

Based on what you've stated as your intended usage and reasons for leaning toward the Air so far, I completely agree with going with the Air. It won't disappoint you. Just be mindful of your solid state drive's substantially smaller size compared to what you may be used to with your iMac.

Since you have an iMac the Air would make a great addition especially if long hours of portability are needed.

Since there is no reason for you to need the pro, I would go with the Air.

The iPad is more the size of a 11" MBA - the 13" is quite a bit bigger than the iPad.

I got the i7 13" MBA for my wife and it is faster than my 2009 17" MBP (Core2duo)

256GB is small but I mitigate that by putting all media on an external drive. There aren't any small thunderbolt drives that I have found yet so I am still using a USB drive to hold anything large. With Media (Photos, video, music) off the main drive 256GB is plenty of room for the other documents - for my wife at least. (Honestly she was using an old MBA with a 60GB hard drive and that wasn't filled up either. When I restored from time machine she was only using 40 some gigs).

Looking like the air it is, must admit I wouldn't have hesitated on this choice if the RAM was upgradeable, its the only downside to this laptop, but for my needs 4GB should be fine. Thanks for replies.

I got my MBP with 4GB and upgraded to 8GB later. You are right though - you cannot do anything with the MBA. That being said - 4GB was good enough to run 1 Virtual Machine and all my Mac programs together. I was running Photoshop (for light editing) and Premiere for (light) HD video editing with a VM running. I run a Linux VM and a Windows VM for work so that is why I went to 8GB.

Unless you are trying to do really heavy computing - VMs, Media editing, rendering and the like, 4GB should be fine. If you are trying to do anything heavy - that is why there is a Pro line of laptops.

IvanLasston said:

I got my MBP with 4GB and upgraded to 8GB later. You are right though - you cannot do anything with the MBA. That being said - 4GB was good enough to run 1 Virtual Machine and all my Mac programs together. I was running Photoshop (for light editing) and Premiere for (light) HD video editing with a VM running. I run a Linux VM and a Windows VM for work so that is why I went to 8GB.

Unless you are trying to do really heavy computing - VMs, Media editing, rendering and the like, 4GB should be fine. If you are trying to do anything heavy - that is why there is a Pro line of laptops.

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Ivan, (or anyone else with the air)one last question if you dont mind, whats the sound quality like from the MBA, just that i like to have some light background itunes playing while i work. I would go and have a play with one, but the nearest place selling apple gear is 70 miles away. Not a deal breaker as i can always get some headphones, just curious.

The new ones are fine - it has stereo. The originals were mono - my wife blew out the original speaker. It is computer laptop speakers though - so it isn't great. I actually have a bunch of Airport Expresses scattered through the house, with decent speakers connected so I can play just about anything to any speaker in the house.

I use Airfoil on the Mac and PC to send any audio to any speaker.
Rogue Amoeba | Airfoil | Select Your Operating System

Headphones work great if you want better audio without disturbing anyone else.

There is also Twelve South's bassJump - I've pondered this but I really don't use the internal speakers unless I am traveling - but the I tend to use headphones anyway too.
BassJump Subwoofer - BassJump Subwoofer - Twelve South

Cheers appreciated