Is the Macbook Air slower than a Macbook Pro with the same CPU?

Uh, yeah.


Three year old chip versus brand new chip.


Compared to the new swath of MacBook Pros? SURE they will.

"Where did the PPC user base go? (I mean those who were still using G4 machines (and still didn't even update to G5 yet) for professional photography when Apple announced the move to Intel."

Not sure where you're coming from with this. Heck most of us just upgraded when a speed increase was warranted. For myself I just skipped the whole G5 thing altogether and made do with G4's until the Intel rollout occurred. Right now I'm waiting for TB and SSD's and peripherals to be affordable and then upgrade the whole studio because of the speed boost which hopefully will translate over into a productivity increase and generate a few more $$$. But I sure as hell ain't going to jump right now.

"Saying a MBA with 2.13 GHz can only be used for web browsing is like saying that a 17-inch MBP with Core 2 Duo can be used for web browsing only. "

That's all just spec whoreism by people. I really don't get any of that at all. Any of the machines on offer today can do very nearly anything (given IO constraints) some slower than others sure, but still pretty respectable.
Remember all the PS bakeoff's at the MacWorlds ?
Gone because they're redundant and meant very little back then anyway except to the few that simply had to have the latest and greatest no matter what.

I guess my point is that as a buyer you weigh up what's on offer and try and match that to your specific needs and your budget :-)
Sry - don't want to come across like I'm condescending but sometimes I feel people tend to over-think some of these decisions.
cheers

The MBA chips are low voltage chips and they supposedly throttle down when they get hotter. This won't show up in short benchmark tests but will on CPU-intensive tasks.

I'm not sure if anyone has tested this to see the extent of the change but suffice to say, it will be slower than an equivalent MBP.

I thought the general consensus was that while the Air is certainly slower than a MacBook Pro based on specs, it actually feels faster to use because the SSD reads so much more quickly than an HD.

So that if you time out, say, rendering a video or doing a Photoshop action, the Air will lose every time. But in day to day use, for things like app launching, waking from sleep and UI responsiveness, the Air "feels" like the faster machine.

You should reread Post No. 4 and take RobM's comments to heart. The Geekbench scores for a 2.13 MacBook Air are nearly double the score of my PowerMac G5 at home. My G5 can do anything that an Intel-based Mac can do except edit HD video. Not only is that MacBook Air substantially faster, but it will also slip into the lid pocket of my brief case. My PowerMac G5 is a somewhat tighter squeeze. The point is that each computer has its uses. Just because there are faster computers available does not mean that a MacBook Air isn't pretty darned fast in and of itself.