PLEASE HELP MBA vs. MBP

[JD827]

I'm trying to decide between a Macbook air and Macbook pro for school and work. I'm in college for programming, web design, and graphic design. I use the Adobe CC Suite for graphic design work and Sublime Text 3 for coding. I have an i7 Mac mini with 3tb hard drive space, and 16gb ram for all the heavy work. I just need something portable that can handle light school work, and freelance work (coding, basic graphic design, and some photo editing). My choices are between the 11" i7 air with 8gb ram or the 13" pro with i5 and 8gb ram (I need to keep costs as low as possible). I would much prefer the air, as long as it can handle what I'm doing. Any help would be greatly appreciated..

 

[Prasad1337]

For coding, the MBA should suffice. If you think your grahic/photo related work will be practiced more often, opt for the MBP instead.

 

[danipoak]

I do a fair bit of coding on a 15" 2008 Pro with a Core2 Duo and it handles it just fine. I also using Lightroom extensively. I also own a 2011 11" Air with an i5 and it is able to handle it. If I do need some heavy computing I source it out to a desktop with newer specs. Sounds to me like the Air would more than suffice for you. I would get a 13" model though rather than an 11". I find the screen is just too small for anything but occasional work.

 

[Prasad1337]

I do a fair bit of coding on a 15" 2008 Pro with a Core2 Duo and it handles it just fine. I also using Lightroom extensively. I also own a 2011 11" Air with an i5 and it is able to handle it. If I do need some heavy computing I source it out to a desktop with newer specs. Sounds to me like the Air would more than suffice for you. I would get a 13" model though rather than an 11". I find the screen is just too small for anything but occasional work.

Thank you! My thoughts exactly.. This is my portable secondary machine for coding, and the primary (desktop replacement) DTR gamer laptop will serve as a server and compute any of the heavier stuff like kernel compilations.
Also, when at home, I now have two screens to work with.

I purchased the 13" rMBP (Early 2015).