To get a new MBA or not?

The SSD will significantly outperform the hard drive in the old one (it's at least 150MB/s vs 50MB/s) so documents and apps open faster and the machine boots faster. It's also resilient to being knocked around and you don't need to shut it down. The CPUs in all the MBAs are faster than the 2.4GHz machine.


The CPU performance of the machines is the following:

Your Macbook (3300) - http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench...&commit=Search
1.6GHz i5 (4600) - http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/search?q=2467m
1.8GHz i7 (5800) - http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/search?q=2677m

In general, the i7s are always better to get and offer good performance improvement over the i5 but you won't notice much difference for everyday tasks. The i7 is good if you encode video but for everyday tasks, your money is better spent elsewhere e.g getting the 13" model.


If you don't plan to use much more space, the 128GB should be ok and you can buy an inexpensive portable hard drive for $50 instead of paying $300 more to go to 256GB. You can even get a 32-64GB pen drive for documents. An SD card slot would have been a good option but they left it out of the 11".

I am in almost your exact same position. I own the same model of MacBook as you, except I went with the 2.0Ghz, which the only difference is no backlit keyboard and the CPU speed. However, I don't feel the speed matters one bit.

I am currently typing on the new 13" MBA so I will give you some insight.

1) Due to the SSD, apps and other disk activity is minimal. This is really the only difference. I notice no real speed improvement, but I haven't done anything heavy like video encoding yet. But for regular apps, iPhoto, iTunes, etc, I notice no improvement.

2) I have the 1.6Ghz i5 and as I said, I suspect people in our position would notice no significant benefit.

3) I have about 92GB used on my MacBook. I am concerned that 128GB may not be big enough, but I am going to be more diligent about deleting videos I no longer need, etc. I don't think its worth $300 for the 128GB upgrade for this type of system. For reference, out of the box, the system is using 16GB of drive space.

There is one other major upgrade from your MacBook that this MBA has... the LCD panel. Just from an hour of use, I can immediately see the difference in panel quality. The viewing angles, brightness, and contrast are leaps and bounds over your MacBook. Throw in a higher resolution and you have one hell of a screen.

To be honest, if I had the same model you have, I would not buy the MBA. It may seem silly, but the backlit keyboard was the tipping point for me. The improved LCD panel is another major factor for me. Otherwise, the old MacBook is fast enough, has plenty of storage (and the disk is speedy enough), and it has the modern trackpad and aluminum unibody.

Anyone upgrading from a non-aluminum unibody should not hesitate for one second.