I am about to buy a MacBook Air and was going to go for the cheaper model as I can't afford to get the higher spec one. However I am wanting to either upgrade the processor or the hard drive to the SSD option.
Since I can only afford to upgrade one of the options I was wondering which is the best to upgrade. I would be using the laptop for general use and the occasional game.
Does anyone know of a disk/ssd upgrade for the macbook air rev c bigger than 128GB? Is anything available?
View 6 Replies View RelatedWhile Apple offers solid state drives (SSDs) in its MacBook Air sub-notebook, it has yet to extend that courtesy to its professional notebook line. A recent in-depth analysis of a MacBook Pro custom fitted with a 128GB SSD offers evidence as to why, while holding promise for the coming year.
Following its performance and battery tests of an SSD-equipped MacBook Air, the highly technical hardware analysis publication AnandTech was propositioned to evaluate a stock 2.5GHz Penryn-based MacBook Pro upgraded with a 128GB Memoright MR25.1-128S SSD.
If you thought Apple's $999 upgrade price for the Air's 64GB SSD was steep, hold on to your seat. The Memoright drive was priced out at a whopping $3,819, which in itself provides one reason why the professional notebooks, which presently ship with a minimum of 200GB of hard disk space, have thus far been left out of the party.
With the combined price of the SSD-eqiupped MacBook Pro bordering on $6000, AnandTech was looking for real world improvements in battery performance, application performance, and overall system usage. To summarize, the drive failed to deliver in all but the final category, serving as yet another compelling argument against offering such an upgrade path in the MacBook Pro at current pricing.
Battery tests showed the SSD to slightly underperform when compared to the standard Hitachi 5400RPM hard disk drive (HDD) Apple ships with the MacBook Pro, while application performance saw marginal improvements (iPhoto Import, Adobe Photoshop CS3 retouch) in some cases but posed as a slight disadvantage in others (iPhoto Export, MS Office).
The advantage of the SSD over the HDD was most apparent in its ability to read random blocks of memory between 3 and 20 times faster than the SSD. But as the analysis notes, most single-application desktop usage models are heaviest on sequential disk access, not random, and hence won't see the biggest performance benefits of the SSD.
Where the flash-based SSD really shined was in overall feel and "snappiness" of the system, which takes into account application launch times, Finder interaction, and system boot time. Launch times were essentially cut in half and the MacBook Pro booted in 22 seconds with the SSD as compared to nearly 40 seconds with the HDD.
AnandTech notes that several of the larger capacity SSDs on the market like the Memoright are not native Serial ATA devices, and instead use an internal PATA interface to an external SATA interface, which presents several inefficiencies. It adds however, that Intel has been talking about its upcoming SSDs and how their own controllers will offer a significant performance.
Those Intel drives are due out sometime in the second half of the year, and with prices for flash memory falling approximately 40 percent year-over-year, it's believed that 2009 will end up being the year for widespread adoption of SSDs in mainstream notebook designs, while 2008 will go down as the year that it all started happening.
Just bought this recently and installed Windows 7. The following screen shot under WEI Macbook Air 2010 13'' 1.86GHz 4GB RAM 256GB. The performance is quite amazing consider its 1.86GHz CPU, I bet 2.13GHz CPU would score bit higher.
View 3 Replies View RelatedWill only having 2gb of RAM pose a problem for 1080p HD content I will only upgrade to 4G if it is absolutely necessary , as I hate Apple have now locked down user upgradable RAM on this notebook.
View 11 Replies View RelatedDo the 128Gb MBP SSDs fail a lot? Have they failed on you...? Because I'm getting one in my MBP and I want to know if it might fail.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI recently bought a MBA with the 128GB SSD. When at the store I launched Word on the SSD version as well as the SATA version and there was a noticeable difference so I decided to pay the extra $700 and go with the 1.86GHz with SSD model. I use this machine for development and my builds carry out file intensive operations that delete and generate a few thousand files (when I generate javadocs). My old Dell desktop from 5 years ago completed this operation in 90 seconds but my MBA takes 400 - 700 seconds. I did some reading and all indicators seem to point to the SSD being fast for reads but slow for writes. Is this correct? I'm not sure I can deal with this slowdown for much longer and I'm thinking a having my SSD replaced with the SATA drive. Will the mac store do this? or is there any less expensive option?
View 9 Replies View RelatedHow to wipe off macbook pro retina 128GB, Latest software 2.6 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, Macintosh HD.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.6)
Mac and wondering to get 128 Solid State or not?
For those that bought it, do you regret spending money, was it as good of an improvement as you thought?
For those that didn't buy it, do you regret and went ahead and did it on your own?
This will be replacing my desctop, it will be used for everything, but not work just for everything and anything
xbench disk test result:250GB Toshiba HDD from Apple score 39.49 vs Kingston V+ SSD scores 236.39
Sequential 102.88 vs 157.61
Random 24.44 vs 472.67
I can feel the speed. It is on sale at [URL] at CAD$ 269.99.
Last week I bought a new 13" 2.53GHz MBP. I also bought a Kingston 128 GB SSDNow V Series from a local computer store (Canada Computers) and installed it myself. It was fast as hell (startup time, restart time, sleep time, application launch time, etc.) and I thoroughly enjoyed it while it lasted. Last night, I restarted my MBP and got the white screen of death with a question mark on a folder. After several calls with Apple and the local computer store, it seems my SSD is dead and I lost all my data. I installed the original/stock 250 GB HD that came with my MBP and that's what I'm using now. During business hours on Monday, I will phone Kingston for help.
My questions for you guys:Has anyone else had a problem with the Kingston SSDNow dying on them? Or any other SSDs? Apple Care said it could be completely Kingston's fault (ie faulty SSD) or the MBP could simply not be compatible with this SSD (although it worked great for a week). The local computer store said it could be my EFI, but I'm running the latest EFI. What do you think? Should I get a refund on the Kingston SSD and stick with the stock 250 GB HD, or should I get a replacement SSD and hope it doesn't happen again? I'm worried about the reliability now
I am looking to swap my mid 2009 15'' macbook pro 500GB 5200rpm hard drive with the new Samsung PB22-J 128GB 2.5" SATA-II MLC Solid State Hard Drive. Anyone have any advice or experience with this SSD?
View 1 Replies View RelatedWhere is a good store online to purchase a Hard drive Model 1.8 128GB Sata Lif? I have been checking all local computer stores near my areas and no one can get a hold or them. Anyone know where i can find these online from a good website like newegg or etc?
View 3 Replies View RelatedPatriot Warp 128GB SATA II 2.5" Solid State Drive for only $409. Anyone looked into this for the Air?
View 3 Replies View RelatedRecently I have been getting the 'Low Space on Startup Disk" error and see that out of 297GB I gave zero KB left!. After downloading Disk Inventory X I saw that there is a folder in my (Macintosh HD > Library > Logs) named Google and it is 128GB! What does this folder do and why is it so big?
View 12 Replies View RelatedI have a Quicksilver 933 with 1.5GB ram and 2 internal hard drives (WD 320GB, Maxtor 80Gb). Operating system is 10.4.11, Boot ROM is 4.2.5f1. It's my understanding that some QS were produced with the ability to use larger hard drives. Mine does not and I am wondering what I can do to correct this. Computer sees and writes to both drives. The 80 is fully usable but 320 only allows 128 of storage. Disk utility sees whole drive as just under 300Gb but I can't use more than 128. I have ATA HiCap driver that will allow me to partition into sections but it's a pain. Is that my only option or buying a card?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have a MacBook Pro with a 128GB solid state. Is this SATA II or SATA III?
View 3 Replies View RelatedI purchased a 128gb Patriot Torqx to run as the boot drive for my Mac Pro. I know that the new Intels are coming but I am happy with the Patriots and wanted some instant gratification. The machine is definetly snappier but doesn't quite have the pep as my MBP running a 256gb SSD as the sole HDD.
I have (3) 1 TB 5400 rpm drives in a striped RAID array. It seems sometimes when I start an application that lives on the SSD boot drive, the other drives begin to run as well (I can hear them spinning). Any thoughts on what could be done to speed up my system and also make sure that the SSD runs as independent from the traditional Hdd's as possible?I am running a early 2008 Intel 2.8ghz machine, 8 cores, 6gb RAM.
Looking at getting a 13" MPB to replace my aging Macbook. I am aware of the imminent arrival of the next gen next year, but still seriously considering getting a current gen.
Anyway, I am debating between getting the 2.66GHz version with 4GB RAM and the 2.4GHz version with 8GB RAM. I already have a 500GB 7200rpm HDD which I will transplant into it. Some stage in the next year or so I will look into getting an SSD and optibay for it.
I know that if I get the faster processor I can upgrade the RAM at a later date, but is the faster processor worth the money, or would I be better spending on RAM?
Pros and cons ?
View 7 Replies View RelatedDoes anyone know the exact name and part numbers for Wireless upgrade kits for the following machines:
G5 Dual 2.0 ghz - (main board has 8 slots for RAM upgrade)
Mac Pro Quad 3.0ghz
I've been searching around in circles trying to find this out and I'm just getting no where!
how to obtain a bigger memory for my imac so that I can upgrade to OSX LIon and then to icloud? My imac currently has 1 Gb memory and I need 2 Gb apparently. Apple can no longer supply a 2 Gb memory. I will need to knowe hwre to buy a suitable memory and how to change it.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 1 Gb memory
I am kicking around between upgrading video card in my 1st gen Mac Pro (2 x 2.66 dual core, 8gb ram) from 7300 Gt to ati 4870 vs. upgrading to a newer system altogether...
Newer MP has 2 x 2.66 quad cores, 12 gb ram with the 4870 card.) What kind of improved performance might I really expect or even notice when using photoshop, light video editing, 3d graphics.
I have not included costs because I want to focus on the performance boosts sans cost for the purpose of this discussion.
I have an iMac with Mac OSX 10.6.8 and 2.4 GH2 Intel Core 2 Duo processor.I want to upgrade to Lion so that I can use iCloud to share documents with my iPad.Do I have to upgrade to Snow Leopard first or can I upgrade directly to Lion?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
Maybe this isn't the correct forum...I'm a newbie. Today, after checking and installing upgrades to my iMac OS X, I'm seeing a pop-up saying 'my existing messages need to be upgraded the first time I use Mail again." I'm not sure what it intends to do to my Mail messages and I'm slightly fearful because many of them are Outlook Express messages that were transferred from my old PC. Anyone gone ahead and done this 'mail upgrade' yet? and did you have any issues?
View 7 Replies View RelatedMy mac is up to date with mavericks 10.9.3 but the mail application won't upgrade since when I open it a message appears "upgrading your mail database... this make take a few minutes" but it just freezes. I have tried restarting the app, the mac and I dont know what else to do.
Info:
MacBook Air (13-inch Late 2010), OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)
I went to BB and bought the upgrade for my MBP running Leopard but I decided I would try to install it on my Tiger running iMac almost possitive it would not work. It however worked and even installed faster (1/3 the time) of my MBP with more Ram and better processor. So it is definitely done
View 1 Replies View RelatedI am curious about the system requirement of Snow Leopard. Since the performance and speed are better on SL, I think Snow Leopard will consume a little bit more resource of our macs., although I know Snow Leopard is just only the refinement of the software.
So, my question is that WILL YOU UPGRADE YOUR RAM OF YOUR MAC?
I have a 2.66GHz Mac Pro (4-core) with 8GB RAM.
I also have a 2.80GHz MacBook Pro (mid-2009) with 4GB RAM.
My main programs are Flash, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop. I use these on both Macs.
I do a small amount of AfterEffects, UltraFractal, Bryce 6, and Cinema4D, but nothing *big*. I typically use these on the Mac Pro only.
I spend most of my time on the Mac Pro.
I have a Mid 2009 Model Macbook Pro 17" with currently 4 Gigs of ram. I contacted Apple and to upgrade to 8 Gigs of ram from them would cost me $600.
( Type of Ram is Apple Memory Module 8GB 1066MHz DDR3 (PC3-8500) - 2x4GB SO-DIMMs )
That is a ton! I was shocked.
I looked at newegg.com and it looks to be around 250 bucks to upgrade and buy ram from there.
So I have a quick couple of questions.
1. What brand of Ram do you think is the best?
2. Do you guys know of any other places to buy it from for less?
3. Will this void my Applecare warranty?
I looked up how to switch it and that seems quite simple so no help needed there.
