New MacBook Air specs?

Hardware
1

Hello,
I’m thinking of picking up a new 2018 MacBook Air to be my primary “ tote around” machine. I have a new fully loaded MacBook Pro (fall 2018) that I use now and love but it’s pretty heavy to carry around when traveling for work. Wondering about specs for the MacBook Air… I’m looking for it to be essentially a Surface Pro replacement (I used it to for writing my up research - journal articles, book chapters and books, as well as for analyzing data in Tableau and Excel). I’ll likely stream movies on it with Netflix etc when traveling but don’t see me installing Creative Cloud on it except maybe Photoshop for quick photo editing).

Proposed Specs:
512 GB Storage
16 GB memory

What do you think?

I tend to keep machines 3-4 years before handing down to family so would like it to last for a while.

Thanks!

2

Those look like good specs for a few years to come. :+1:

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I would agree.

The weight of the charger will also pay off here - that 29W charger is pretty small and light!

As a note, unless you already have a Creative Cloud subscription I would recommend looking into Pixelmator or other image editing applications - not just because they’re “lighter”, but also because they’re cheaper :wink:

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4

I highly recommend investing in a second charger if your work place is static, it’s been well worth it for me.

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5

I have this same configuration for my on-the-go dev machine. It’s working very good. I have virtual Linux machine running on that MacBook Air alongside macOS and it works fine. At some occasions, I hear the fans kicking in which probably means the processor is turbo boosting. I use it for hours, and this configuration is solid.

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I’m a huge fan of this. You can leave a power cable where you normally work and keep a second with you. It’s a little extra money, but it can really help with forgetting the cable and getting stuck without it.

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Thanks for the feedback everyone! I picked it up today and will be setting it up before my flight to London. Figured long haul will give me a nice chance to test :smile:

Do you know if I can use the same charger I have for my MacBook Pro (87 W USB-C) with the Air? I already have a 2nd that I keep at my work desk for that one.

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Good to know, thanks! Will be interesting to hear the fan alongside my Pro as it kicks in fairly often.

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Appreciate the tip. I love having my 2nd charger for my Pro.

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I’ve been on a CC subscription for too many years to count, unfortunately, it definitely is a chunk of $. I am hoping to have my employer start picking up the cost soon. I used to have a photography business so it’s what I’ve been most comfortable with but it’s a lot per month that I don’t think I’m really justifying these days. What do you use for photo storage/organization? Anything other than iPhoto?