Which MacBook should you buy?

My 13" MBP 2010 (with aftermarket additional SSD) is only slightly faster than my Dad's new 13" MB Air.

He often has 4-5 etrade power pro sessions running; these aren't lightweight by any means... and it works fine.

Of course, I need my 8GB and 750GB spinning rust drive so I would feel a bit cramped in the MB Air, but damn, that Air is super light and just as fast as my tricked out MBP.

And it has a higher resolution screen! Another recommend for any non-power users to get an Air over the MBP.

Forgot to mention that I leveled the choice by putting at the same price point the following configurations:

Air 13" + 4GB ram vs Pro 13" + 128GB SSD

This puts the decision between, portability and screen resolution of the Air vs the power and connectivity of the Pro or put another way updated vs midlife.

Hope it helps whoever reads the article, I'm still undecided but moving towards the Pro because of the update, it is always a huge decision when buying Apple hw.

The Macbook Pro with the thunderbolt port seems awesome. Does anyone have it? I included a link to an article I wrote – http://tinyurl.com/6awk4a2

I'm in the dilemma myself of buying either the Air 13" or the Pro 13", it kills me that the pro has less resolution than the Air, 1440 vs 1280 is a lot of room. Then the fight is about Power vs ultra portability.

I'm not worried about performance since for my graphic/video needs on the go, the Core 2 Duo should be ok, but about the next hardware update of the Air. Feels bad to buy an Apple product in the middle of its lifespan before next update. Meanwhile the Pro is just on top of the game.

Should I be worried about next Air refresh or it is out of the question if you don't need high performance and plenty of connections? On the other front both are very portable although of course the Air has the "edge".

Had to decide this week, I have been on the indecision for over two weeks already :)

Whenever folks talk about the Air, there's a lot of "you don't wanna do any heavy-duty video editing on the Air or Logic work on the Air" -- that doesn't really speak to other multimedia uses. So, my question is, how does Air handle iLife chores, specifically the relatively lightweight iMovie and Garageband apps? Can I move comfortably in those apps without choking the machine? Thanks for any responses.

If you have time to wait, here are my suggestions:

1) MacBook Air - due for an update in June with Sandy Bridge CPUs, which will be a major bump compared to the Core 2 Duos used now. Performance even at the low end will be fast enough for a good percentage of the population. Best used in conjunction with a desktop if you have demanding needs.
2) 13" MacBook Pro - Sandy Bridge GPU is +/- compared to the 2010 13" MBP. If you game but need portability, I'd wait. If you don't game at all, go ahead and buy.
3) 15" MacBook Pro- Quad-core CPUs make this a huge leap compared to previous models. Low-end model has a weaker GPU than the 330GTM from last year, but the high end ups the CPU and GPU, and VRAM significantly. When you're already paying $1800 for a laptop, you might as well get the best.
4) 17" MacBook Pro - If you are considering this, my advice isn't for you anymore. Just make sure if you are spending this much money, you should have an SSD in your future!

Just throwing this out there...
"...2 GB of RAM and 64 GB of hard drive space..."
Wouldn't that be 64 GB of SSD space?

After all the haters going on and on (and on and on) about how "underpowered" the original Air was, I was utterly blown away by the performance of the new one when I tried it in the Apple Store. MS Word gets slower to launch with each iteration, but on the Air, Word 2010 was up and running in about 3 seconds (I counted 24ish for Word 2008 on my 2008 2.4GHz 4GB MPB).

I want one.

Left-handed or backhanded, both are used in the states. And you can't really call yourself underground if you keep blathering on about it. I wonder if pretentious behavior will lead to a stroke? If so, recent research shows that left-handed individuals recover much faster than the right-handed. Oh yeah, great job TJ.

I 100% agree. I've replaced a previous generation 13" Macbook Air (with the 120Gb HD) and a 3.06Ghz iMac with an Air.

I do have the 11" Model, 128Gb Storage 4Gb and the 1.6Ghz processor, and in the office a 24" cinema display.

This whole system performs superbly. I just love the fact that something so small and light is more than quick enough for all my computing needs, including light video and photo editing and heavy document and PDF production.

The writer is right here, assessing the Air by looking at specs isn't the right approach, using one is the only way to fully appreciate how useful this little machine is.