Considering switching from MB Pro to MB Air. Advice appreciated.

[johneasley]

Good Morning,

I'm currently running an early 2011, 15" MacBook Pro with a 750 gb hard drive and I upgraded the RAM to 16 gb. I am considering switching to a new MacBook Air, 13" with 8 gb RAM and the 256 gb solid state drive. My concern is memory. At this moment, I'm running the Chrome browser, iMessages, and an app called Memory Monitor. That's it. And 9 gigs of the 16 installed are free. If just these three apps are tying up 7 gb, I'm concerned that the 8gb that would be in the Air. Does the Air do a better job of memory management or something? I also do Windows development on the side so I need VM ware, Windows 7 or 10, and Visual Studio installed. Probably not a great idea to chew up the 256 gig SSD with that stuff so I could probably run them off of a small external drive and only plug it in when needed. Adding another $300 for the 512 gb drive doesn't seem to be the most bang for the buck. Is this a solid plan? Any thoughts or guidance would be appreciated.

 

[pigoo3]

My concern is memory. At this moment, I'm running the Chrome browser, iMessages, and an app called Memory Monitor. That's it. And 9 gigs of the 16 installed are free. If just these three apps are tying up 7 gb, I'm concerned that the 8gb that would be in the Air.

Newer OS versions manage ram differently. No way those 3 apps are actually using 7gigs of ram. Check "Memory Pressure" in Activity Monitor. If it's green…you're good.

My wife has a 2010 MBA with only 4gig of ram running El Capitan…and she has a LOT more apps open…and she has no issues.

If you decide to get a new MBA with 8gig of ram. You should be fine.

- Nick

 

[johneasley]

Newer OS versions manage ram differently. No way those 3 apps are actually using 7gigs of ram. Check "Memory Pressure" in Activity Monitor. If it's green…you're good.

Good to know. Thanks. I checked the Memory Pressure and it says only 4.9 gigs being used. Also turns out there is more running in the background than I thought, including several Chrome helpers, an iTunes helper, and a Photos helper. Still, that's good news. Thanks, Nick.

 

[pigoo3]

I checked the Memory Pressure and it says only 4.9 gigs being used.

Your welcome. I would still advise not focusing on the numbers much. As mentioned. Newer OS versions manage ram much differently…and it's difficult to make "heads or tails" out of the numbers. The memory pressure color is a better measure of ram use.

With those apps you're running. A new MBA with 8gig of ram will be fine.

Check out the "Memory" section of this Apple document for more info:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201464

- Nick