Okay, last reply and then I leave you guys to the fate of irrational happiness paying more for worse hardware.
re 2: It takes an hour to reinstall windows. If you swap out the hard drive (so a vertex 3 in a MBP), this is something you have to do with an apple anyway. One hour is not "much more work". Don't kid yourself.
re 3: If the MBA owner does anything CPU intensive they will likely profit by upgrading to the x220. Look at the real world numbers (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-1...) to get a better picture here. x220 numbers are harder to show, as no reviewers saw fit to review with a good hard drive in it -- just compare with the MBP in that review and know that the x220 with a vertex 3 is between 2 and 10x the 2010 15" MBP on those benchmarks (http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6056&re...).
But really, I think you're probably right -- it sounds like a mac would be better for you
You're here linking benchmark charts, because as a power user you believe power users represent a large subset of computer owners. We don't. We're in the minority.
My girlfriend, and everyone else in the humongous non-power-user subset, does not care about how a Vertex 3 can bury an Air's SSD. She doesn't know the Vertex exists! If she did, she'd probably ask why she should spend $300 on it if her Air already works amazingly well.
We're talking about different groups here. You're talking about the type of people who read computer hardware blogs like Anandtech. I'm talking about everyone else in the world.
> implying that power users are the only ones who should think about performance.
1.0 second is about the limit for the user's flow of thought to stay uninterrupted. This turns out to make a big difference in productivity. See http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html
I'm talking about anyone who values their time. You're talking about secretaries looking at cat pictures. You're also doing that on a thread started when a HNer said he purchases laptops via the same method.
Please:
1. Read the whole thread to ensure your "points" weren't already made elsewhere
2. Consider not replying when you don't have any information not obviously inferable from your previous post.
I'm talking about anyone who values their time. You're talking about secretaries looking at cat pictures.
Calm down there, Sparky. Are you really suggesting someone doesn't value their time because they bought an Air over an X220 with a SSD? You understand that such an assertion is ridiculous, right?
Here's a "point" for you: given the economic concept of utility, are you shocked that someone would pass on an X220 + Vertex in favor of an Air and a month of groceries? How about the idea that the marginal benefit of a Vertex 3 over an Air may be tiny enough to some that they'll pass?
We haven't even discussed failure rates, which are anecdotally bad on older Vertexes; can you blame someone for choosing an Air, along with 3 years of service at any Apple Store?
Also, another "point" for you: I sincerely doubt you would've responded like that in person, so you should probably re-read HN's commenting rules and think twice next time.
1. I accept your point that those with limited capital sometimes need to sacrifice their potential -- if you can't afford college then your annual income will be lower (though perhaps not lifetime income).
2. Diminishing marginal utility is not usually considered to apply to time -- are you saying that your girlfriend would rather use a mac than add an additional ~year of work/play time to her lifespan?
3. Note that the concept of diminishing marginal utility is different than the concept of utility.
Why would you be doing something CPU intensive on a MBA like computer? Surely you just ssh into the beefy workstation in the corner or in the data centre to do the heavy lifting? Seems like a non-argument to me.
That was my point: you wouldn't on a MBA like computer. You would on a high-performance small formfactor laptop like the x220. See my other replies for more information
No, you'd do it on a Mac Pro, or, if you want to try and save money, on a PC hidden in a closet somewhere. You'll need a PC hidden in a closet somewhere as soon as you need a cluster anyway. Same for compilation, Xcode even makes it easier for you to set up a distributed build.
Now, there are reasons to get a strong laptop. A good one is if you need some serious power on the go. Are you running that bioinformatics software while on an airplane?
No, you'd use EC2 servers to avoid doing your own maintenance, and you'd do so as a last resort because GUIs are useful and remote development is laggy. http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html
That's the 2010 Macbook Air, which did indeed have a brutally slow Core 2 Duo. It would be more useful to look at the mid-2011 model, which has a processor three generations newer (due to some sort of tedious dispute between Intel and NVidia, there were never embedded NVidia chipsets for Nehalem, so Apple waited until Intel GPUs got good enough, in Sandy Bridge; they never made a Nehalem Air).
Wait, I thought Apple hardware just works and delivers exceptional user experience without concerning the user with "2010" vs "mid-2011" or specifics of which CPU it uses and why.
Who's claiming that? For a while, the Macbook Air was in fact a particularly bad choice if you wanted high processor performance (which is a big if; computers are now fast enough that for many users it hardly matters). This is no longer the case. Simple enough.
re 2: It takes an hour to reinstall windows. If you swap out the hard drive (so a vertex 3 in a MBP), this is something you have to do with an apple anyway. One hour is not "much more work". Don't kid yourself.
re 3: If the MBA owner does anything CPU intensive they will likely profit by upgrading to the x220. Look at the real world numbers (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-1...) to get a better picture here. x220 numbers are harder to show, as no reviewers saw fit to review with a good hard drive in it -- just compare with the MBP in that review and know that the x220 with a vertex 3 is between 2 and 10x the 2010 15" MBP on those benchmarks (http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6056&re...).
But really, I think you're probably right -- it sounds like a mac would be better for you