if there be any impediment to this laptop, speak now

[psocoptera]

My five-year-old MacBook is showing its age. Does anyone have a compelling reason they'd like to share with me that I should *not* replace it with an "old style" MacBook Pro? (No Retina, hard disk what actually spins around, built in cd/dvd drive.) I covet the 1TB disk and am not quite ready to go driveless yet, but if someone wanted to make a case for why I should reconsider the MacBook Air (or something else), I'd be curious to hear it before I put money down.

(And yes, I am wealthy and lucky in being able to just buy whatever laptop I decide will work best.)

Comments

[allectofromlj]

Speaking as someone who doesn't have a tablet and who spent three years commuting with my laptop every day, the MacBook Air was amazing. It does everything I could want, with plenty of room for downloading the occasional movie or tv show if I desperately need something to watch on a plane flight or whatever. I haven't missed a cd/dvd drive at all (my music is all backed up to the cloud, and I watch all my dvds via blu-ray on my tv for maximum HDness.)

On the other hand, if you don't commute with your laptop and do use tablets (I don't specifically because I can't read on them without my eyes hurting; my nook with it's e-ink and non-back-lighting serves just as well, and between that, my smartphone, and my Air I feel well covered), a heavier laptop is probably not a big issue? In college I had the old 17-inch powerbook, because I basically "commuted" from my bedroom to the living room couch; sometimes I'd take it to a friend's house, but I was driving everywhere then, rather than carrying it on my shoulder/back on pubtrans...

I dunno. Like I said, I love my Air, and don't miss anything—if I did, I'd have bought an external cd/dvd drive, like, 2 1/2 years ago? But I also live in a city where I take pubtrans everywhere and also take my laptop everywhere, so. ymmv.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm definitely in the "laptop sometimes commutes between the couch and the bedroom" category. (Also after five years of mostly going places with a small person and a diaper bag, the fantasy of going out with my laptop instead feels so, like, psychologically unencumbered, it's hard to think the weight would matter much...).

I don't really "get" tablets or how they fit into people's electronic lives. What would I do with a tablet that I'm not doing with my laptop or my phone? (Other than "never see it again because the kids would never put it down".)

[allectofromlj]

I don't use tablets either, but my dad does? I think--he doesn't like using his cellphone for a ton of non-phone purposes, because the screen is so small and his fingers are big and he's old and he'd probably still use a blackberry if the buttons weren't so tiny...

He has a desktop at home, and a laptop that he keeps in the country most of the time and then takes when he needs to travel, but that's the only way he uses it as a laptop. And he doesn't have an e-reader, his ipad serves that purpose. So his tablet fills a need for him that I don't have.

But anyway, I'm pretty sure the Air is for city people who commute every day w/ their laptops and carry them everywhere; almost everyone I know in NYC who takes a computer to and from work has an Air or an almost-as-light non-Mac. On the other hand, I don't know a lot of non-NYers who use it, so I think you'll be just fine. And with two youngsters running around, something nice and solid may be the way to go, in any event.

(When the kids get old enough that you don't mind as much, you might consider a tablet for them for the specific purpose of long car rides, though. If they're not prone to motion sickness, it's a great way to keep kids occupied. My parents were very firm about No Video Games when I was a kid and then when E turned 13 his friends got together and bought him a first generation Game Boy (god, we're old...). D and I then saved all our money until we could afford our own, and car rides were instantaneously quieter and more pleasant for everyone, although I did have to be careful about my stomach...)

[irilyth]

I'm sort of planning to give them my old phone, once we finish our current phone migration project. :^) The other day at Friendly's, we were waiting for our order, and they were getting antsy, so I downloaded a Tic Tac Toe game for them to play... I suspect there are other relatively benign applications of a 4" tablet in our future.

[belecrivain.livejournal.com]

My tablet (a Nexus 7) is fab as an e-reader, which is no small thing now that I'm downloading six million academic papers. If money is at all an object I'd recommend the route I took (Chromebook + hack to get Ubuntu LTS; cost = $220 or so), but it sounds like you're good there. :)

[glassonion]

I think your reasoning is sound. Among other things, the Pro is likely still a bit sturdier than the Air, and presumably this new laptop is likely to wind up lasting another five years.

[wayman.livejournal.com]

I just went through this. I've got an ailing 4+yo MacBook, and my usage/needs are: lots of memory/power for some things like audio editing; otherwise simple writing and spreadsheets and graphics and internetting did I mention lots of internetting?; and portability.

I have an iPhone which serves as a mini-tablet, but I'm starting to wish I had separate devices in America (a dumb-phone and a tablet, if I need one at all) whilst keeping the smartphone around for Europe (because then I might waste less time on the internet and spend more time interacting with reality? but in Europe I'd really like to carry only one communication device, plus a dedicated camera and high-end audio recorder each with removable high-capacity storage cards). I mean, do I really need to check my email and FB all the damn time at work and at Trader Joes, etc?

So, I opted for an Air maxed out on memory but with only a 256GB drive -- faster machine and a huge memory increase, but the same HD capacity as I have now on my MacBook. I ordered a SuperDrive because I have about 600 CDs and I'd like to be able to import or burn CDs as needed with this machine; I already have one 1TB backup drive and intend to buy 2 more (to use one as active storage and two as strictly backups, rotating one offsite to a friend's house every month or so).

I think I just don't need more than 256GB of disk space -- I don't need to carry around every photograph I've taken since 2002, which is about 40% of my current (nearly full) HD, and I'll set the old MacBook up in a permanent networked location with only music on it so that I can store less music on my Air. And I really like the idea of solid-state storage -- fewer moving parts means less to break, and I trust solid-state storage in a way I don't trust The Cloud.

For watching things on screens and graphic editing I'm sure it's good enough -- it's what I'm used to -- but I'll also be getting a projector for movie nights (because no laptop, even a large retina one, is really good for more than three people watching something).