Macbook air 128gb enough?

[ILoveZed]

Hi, recently I've been thinking of saving money for a macbook air. I kinda gave up on windows laptops, because I really need a thin, light and good looking design made from premium materials for a reasonable price which is pretty hard to find. I have tried MacOS and I found it pretty interesting and fun. It feels like you have something brand new which you have to explore every day. My whole life I have been a windows and android user and I have secretly wanted to try Apple's ecosystem for quite a while now. So for now I am getting just a laptop. Maybe when my s9+ starts to get slow I'll try an Iphone. So I have been wondering is the cheapest macbook air 2018 going to work good for me. I have never had a laptop. My whole life I have used desktop computers and I havent really cared about saving space on my hard drive or ssd, but with only 128gb I am starting to wonder if it's going to be enough. I am going to use the laptop for studying mostly and very light gaming. Something like league of legends ONLY. I have watched reviews showing that it can run the game so that's enough for me. The thing I really want to know is how much time will I be able to use this device for? I am probably not going to change it for quite a while. Maybe like 6 or 7 years, because it's pretty hard to save this much money as a teenager. Mostly I am interested if it will be usable for studying. As I said I am not really familiar with MacOS and I dont really know how much RAM and space do I need for the computer to run normally. So I will be really thankful if someone can help me!

[Dedayog]

This:

 

because I really need a thin, light and good looking design made from premium materials for a reasonable price which is pretty hard to find.

 

Does not work with this:

 

it's pretty hard to save this much money as a teenager.

 

Get a decent looking laptop, unless the world will end if you don't have a Macbook

 

Btw, 128GB is not enough. 

[ILoveZed]

2 minutes ago, jstudrawa said:

This:

 

because I really need a thin, light and good looking design made from premium materials for a reasonable price which is pretty hard to find.

 

Does not work with this:

 

it's pretty hard to save this much money as a teenager.

 

Get a decent looking laptop, unless the world will end if you don't have a Macbook

 

Btw, 128GB is not enough. 

Wellllllll, I almost have the money. So that's not a problem. I just need it to work for long time

[Dedayog]

Just now, ILoveZed said:

Wellllllll, I almost have the money. So that's not a problem. I just need it to work for long time

What's your budget?  

 

Your secret porn wish of trying MacOS is odd.  It's not exciting, and it's a fucking pain in the ass.

 

But go with at least 256GB unless you have access to cloud storage to keep everything off the Macbook.   

[LukeSavenije]

7 minutes ago, ILoveZed said:

Wellllllll, I almost have the money. So that's not a problem. I just need it to work for long time

can i interest you in a hackingtosh? matebooks do great on it, and kinda look and feel like a 2012 macbook pro

[DrMacintosh]

11 minutes ago, jstudrawa said:

Your secret porn wish of trying MacOS is odd.  It's not exciting, and it's a fucking pain in the ass.

That’s your opinion. In my opinion Windows on a laptop is a pain in the ass. 

[jaslion]

6 minutes ago, ILoveZed said:

Wellllllll, I almost have the money. So that's not a problem. I just need it to work for long time

With how high the failure rates are on current macbooks longevity and macbooks do not go together. 128gb is really small and fills up even for users that are really carefull with how much data they store.

 

The apple ecosystem nowadays is quite bloated but does have some nice features which only really become usable once you start going everything apple. I would just get a normal laptop that is a lot better value with a larger drive and well replaceable battery. After 6-7 years a battery is basically completely destroyed so something easier to replace would be a good idea.

 

Another big thing is specs. The base model macbook air is weak. Will it be useable in 6-7 years yes but look at similar devices from 6-7 years ago. Something with an i5 4200u from 6 years ago is just slow to use and that boost tech of up with the air to 3.6ghz will almost never happen apart from 2-3 second bursts not to mention thermal issues due to it's cooling or lack there of.

 

My advice look into like a lenovo yoga if you want some good bang for the buck with plenty of features (530 or 730) or maybe a dell xps if you want to be fancy.

[Dedayog]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

That’s your opinion. In my opinion Windows on a laptop is a pain in the ass. 

No need to tell me it's my opinion, it's obviously phrased as such on a subjective subject.

 

I really just don't like laptops in general.  

[DrMacintosh]

128GB will fill up way to fast with the installation of LoL. 

 

If you have plan on doing anything with the machine other than use Safari and Play League, get the 256GB MacBook Pro without a touchbar. The Pros have Iris graphics and much better performance than the MacBook Airs for about the same price. 

 

$1,399 with no sales tax:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1342540-REG/apple_mpxt2ll_a_13_3_macbook_pro_mid.html

[GoldenLag]

22 minutes ago, ILoveZed said:

I kinda gave up on windows laptops, because I really need a thin, light and good looking design made from premium materials for a reasonable price which is pretty hard to find

Huawei Matebook 13. (this is a really good one)

Huawei Matebook 14. 

Dell XPS

HP Envy X360

HP Elitebook

Surface Laptop

Huawei Matebook X Pro (2018)

Lenovo Thinkpad

 

its not that hard. 

[JorgenT]

I strongly recommend 256GB. 128GB isn’t enough, you’ll feel the limit out of the box. The OS and a few apps will easily take 60GB, caches, libraries and things like iOS backups take at least another 20GB. That doesn’t leave enough for everyday stuff like photos and movies. Plus stuffing your storage full effects performance and longevity of the hardware.

[GoldenLag]

How much of a budget are we looking at here?

[ILoveZed]

21 minutes ago, jstudrawa said:

What's your budget?  

 

Your secret porn wish of trying MacOS is odd.  It's not exciting, and it's a fucking pain in the ass.

 

But go with at least 256GB unless you have access to cloud storage to keep everything off the Macbook.   

my budget is around $1300. I dont really think that I can go over that. In my country one dollar is like 1.7 leva which is pretty expensive, but when you add all the taxes it goes around 2 leva. So at this point Imagine I am paying double the price

[ILoveZed]

9 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

Huawei Matebook 13. (this is a really good one)

Huawei Matebook 14. 

Dell XPS

HP Envy X360

HP Elitebook

Surface Laptop

Huawei Matebook X Pro (2018)

Lenovo Thinkpad

 

its not that hard. 

I have looked at the surface laptop, but... its doesnt even have a usb-c port. That's a deal braker for me

[.Apex.]

16 minutes ago, ILoveZed said:

The thing I really want to know is how much time will I be able to use this device for? I am probably not going to change it for quite a while. Maybe like 6 or 7 years, because it's pretty hard to save this much money as a teenager. Mostly I am interested if it will be usable for studying. As I said I am not really familiar with MacOS and I dont really know how much RAM and space do I need for the computer to run normally. So I will be really thankful if someone can help me

If you tend to save a lot of pictures 128GB won't be enough, try to aim for 256GB instead, but as a counterpoint you can also buy an External SSD and save all your pictures or work there, But I think you will still have problems managing your data on a 128GB drive especially for such a long time, but as everyone else said you can get a more suited Windows laptop for a similar or cheaper price, but it's up to you and it's understandable

Also just so you're aware, there's always a chance the Macbook or the External SSD might fail, so it's advised to save all your important data in the cloud as Apple doesn't offer data recovery on the internal drive and the data is encrypted

[ILoveZed]

8 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

How much of a budget are we looking at here?

Around 1300 dollars

[ILoveZed]

22 minutes ago, LukeSavenije said:

can i interest you in a hackingtosh? matebooks do great on it, and kinda look and feel like a 2012 macbook pro

I have tried hackintosh on my PC, but I had a poor experience with all the incompatibility of display drivers. And it isnt really a full MacOS experience

[LukeSavenije]

Just now, ILoveZed said:

I have tried hackintosh on my PC, but I had a poor experience with all the incompatibility of display drivers. And it isnt really a full MacOS experience

i mean... the only thing you have is that it shouldn't be updated

 

some devices like the matebook are better supported tho

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, ILoveZed said:

I have tried hackintosh on my PC, but I had a poor experience with all the incompatibility of display drivers. And it isnt really a full MacOS experience

Any reason for wanting mac os other than a curiosity?

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, ILoveZed said:

Around 1300 dollars

Huawei Matebook X (2018)

 

Doesnt get any better.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Huawei-MateBook-Signature-i7-8550U-GeForce/dp/B07CTHN94Z/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=huawei+matebook+x+pro&qid=1557351253&s=gateway&sr=8-3

 

Like i dont think you will find much better.

[ILoveZed]

3 minutes ago, _Syn_ said:

If you tend to save a lot of pictures 128GB won't be enough, try to aim for 256GB instead, but as a counterpoint you can also buy an External SSD and save all your pictures or work there, But I think you will still have problems managing your data on a 128GB drive especially for such a long time, but as everyone else said you can get a more suited Windows laptop for a similar or cheaper price, but it's up to you and it's understandable

Also just so you're aware, there's always a chance the Macbook or the External SSD might fail, so it's advised to save all your important data in the cloud as Apple doesn't offer data recovery on the internal drive and the data is encrypted

I probably will be saving only some movies on the laptop to watch while traveling or something, but mostly I will use it for school stuff. Presentations, documents, excel files, possibly programming too.

[.Apex.]

Just now, ILoveZed said:

I probably will be saving only some movies on the laptop to watch while traveling or something, but mostly I will use it for school stuff. Presentations, documents, excel files, possibly programming too.

that sounds feasible to me with a 128GB drive

[jaslion]

4 minutes ago, ILoveZed said:

I probably will be saving only some movies on the laptop to watch while traveling or something, but mostly I will use it for school stuff. Presentations, documents, excel files, possibly programming too.

Programming means visual studio (almost always) which is another 10-20gb gone for a single program and depending on the project sizes it can be quite storage heavy.

 

Edit:

When programming you will almost always also make it for windows which usually requires a windows machine or with mac windows vm (on an air with a dual core it's pretty painfull to run a vm that has to build an exe). So no matter what you'll have to use windows in a form anyways.

 

If you really want a macbook then I would recommend waiting for a mac pro with an actually fixed keyboard design or get a used one before the keyboard issue popped up.

Edited May 8, 2019 by jaslion
Forgot to mention an important aspect

[ILoveZed]

2 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Any reason for wanting mac os other than a curiosity?

It just feels way easier and faster to use. And it does that out of the box. I know I could use tools in windows to manage and search stuff faster.

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, ILoveZed said:

It just feels way easier and faster to use. And it does that out of the box. I know I could use tools in windows to manage and search stuff faster.

Windows has a search bar. Its quick and it searches for relevant stuff.........

 

I dont think you will find the headturner of a laptop the is the Matebook X Pro (2018).