What is the life span of a new entry level Macbook Air or MacBook Pro

I will suggest you to buy MacBook Air 13 or 15! I posses a 13 inch 2012 MacBook Air. It is a really smooth one. I just love it. Since your mum uses it for light task, a light weight laptop would be just fine.
Ask your mum if she is comfortable with a 11 inch screen. If not, 13 inch would be just fine..

And I too hate windows PCs! ;-)

Cheers!!

- Suvrat! :)

(Regards from India)

 

I have no idea why you have issues with your iBook G4. I have a 500 MHz PowerBook G3 (Pismo) that is wonderful. The only thing that i can think of is that I have ample free capacity on the PowerBook's replacement HDD.

 

This gets back to your original question. I have a 3-year-old MacBook Pro running OS X 10.8.2 Mountain Lion, two PowerMac G5s [one 2004; the other, 2005] running MacOS X 10.4.11 (Tiger), and the PowerBook G3 (Pismo) also running 10.4.11. All give excellent service. Heck, I even have an old 266 MHz beige Power Mac G3 running MacOS 9.2.3 that I fire-up on occasion.

 

What is the lifespan of a Mac? How high is up?

I'm still running a 2007 15" MBP. It's had a few minor falls to carpeted floors, a couple scratches but it seems to work great. I did upgrade the hard drive and memory, and the battery was replaced a year or two ago.

The usable lifespan of a computer is dependent on whether it fits your needs, how long you can put up with it, or when an expensive part dies.

Hi Timmy,

 

I reckon you can get her the MBA 13", it'll certainly put a on her face when everything is so fast & light!

An iPad is a pretty good machine for light use. If the iBook is a 12" laptop, the 10" iPad won't seem all that much smaller. It won't get all the content from primarily Flash services but you'll get Hulu Plus, all the Youtube content and Netflix. Plus the display is an IPS panel so video content will look much better and it can be hooked up to the TV easily for watching movies on the big screen. An Apple TV can help too of course or some other TV box that might offer the complete Hulu library. It would be so much easier to deal with support-wise and cheap.

If there is a need to watch DVDs, they can be ripped and either put on the iPad or on network storage. Network storage can be used to keep music, photos, movies etc and copied to and from the iPad when needed.

The new iPad is also more than twice as fast as the iBook - it's dual 1.4GHz.

There are a couple of options to get round that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNR765Ll_lc
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31747_7-57383068-243/onlive-desktop-plus-adds-flash-to-your-ipad-for-$5-a-month-hands-on/

They're not ideal if you had to use them regularly.

Fear not. I am writing this on an old Macbook (black) running Snow Leopard. The machine is five years old - late 2007 model - and it still runs perfectly well. I use it at home, office and while traveling. It served me very well in light and heavy-duty work in the past, as much as a laptop can get.

Today's portables are much better of course. And OS X is very mature. This means longevity for any machine you buy today, especially if the use is relatively light as you suggest.

My wife has a three years old Macbook Pro. It still feels like a new machine, it is so nice. Certainly the 7200 rpm hard drive helps in this. The Macbook Air with the SSD should be even better in that respect.

I just got an entry-level MBA 13" and it is the most beautiful laptop I have ever owned in my life. And I owned at one point the Titanium Powerbook G4 which was amaaazing. But the MBA 13". I'm using it for lots of "content-creation" stuff, tons of apps open, video, sound, driving 27" display, 128GB but most of my stuff is cloud so...

Do it. MBA 13" entry-level. I am very confident you could do a solid ~3~ years with it.

Caveat: the MBA 13" screen I have is missing a bit of "red" ~ ie when calibrated it seems it can't hit straight red, straight reds are slightly orange-y or slightly purplish... But that's okay because I do "design" on the external 27" Apple LED Cinema Display.

But for design and hardcore "pro" stuff... MBP 13" or 15" ~Retina~. Those screens are just... unbelievable.

I bought my first Mac, a Mac Plus, in 1986. It still works! And though it's totally obsolete (except for typing and printing text), it does still work... which is more than I can say for any PC that I've had for more than 5 years.

 

Point being, even if the machine, the OS or certain programs become obsolete, if the machine still works, it will still function and perform the same tasks that it did when you first bought it (in this case, web surfing, etc.). And there's a better statistical chance that an Apple product will still be working than about any other brand.

I used to use a powerbook G3 Pismo with the 400mHz processor for watching youtube videos over wifi (802.11b).  More than adequate back then- had 512MB ram and 40 gig HDD with 10.4.11 on board.  An iBook G4 should be handling youtube more than adequately.  Currently use a 4 year old macbook pro for everything (incl video editing).  Probably worth noting that your G4 iBook's speed isn't far off that of most tablets (1gHz Arm processors), which run youtube etc smoothly.

I have seen one in person. It is an absolutely amazing sight. But the net is full of reports with the so-called image retention in the retina-equiped MBP's. Even at the Apple support forums there is a huge thread about it. It seems that this issue is related to the LG displays. Some of them are from Samsung and those do not present the issue. It looks like a lottery at this point, unless they have already found a solution.