MacBook Questions

[nether1234]

So my little sister is in college and her laptop broke. The siblings (including me) are thinking of getting her a new laptop for Christmas and I have pretty much been tasked with this. I was thinking a refurbished one from Apple, but I have no idea was size SSD she would need. She is in school for becoming a teacher so I feel like most of her school work would be web based. Would 256 GB be enough or should we spring for something larger? Also, I know Apple just started with 16 GB of RAM being standard, but would 8 GB be enough?

[Haswellx86]

I don't know how much MacOS takes up, but 256 GB storage should be quite enough if everything is web based. You can still store quite a bit on it. If you want to store some heavy games, then it would require a lot more.

 

8GB RAM is still enough for light work. And you can still get away by getting some heavy tasks like some video editing or light CAD on 8 GB of memory.

 

Do tell us what Mac you are looking to buy. M1 Air Macbooks have gotten much cheaper if you want to buy new.

 

If budget is limited, why not go with a PC laptop rather than Mac?

[nether1234]

1 minute ago, Haswellx86 said:

I don't know how much MacOS takes up, but 256 GB storage should be quite enough if everything is web based. You can still store quite a bit on it. If you want to store some heavy games, then it would require a lot more.

 

8GB RAM is still enough for light work. And you can still get away by getting some heavy tasks like some video editing or light CAD on 8 GB of memory.

 

Do tell us what Mac you are looking to buy. M1 Air Macbooks have gotten much cheaper if you want to buy new.

 

If budget is limited, why not go with a PC laptop rather than Mac?

I think we are looking to stay around $1,000 or less. Sister has an iPhone, so just assuming she would want to stay in the Apple ecosystem just to make things simple.

[RONOTHAN##]

2 hours ago, nether1234 said:

Would 256 GB be enough or should we spring for something larger?

As someone who daily's a macbook, just having all my software installed takes up about 150-200GB. 256GB would be liveable, but barely, so I would try to get at least 512GB if you can help it. Much more than that gets very expensive though, so beyond that you really should just invest in an external SSD for her. 

 

2 hours ago, nether1234 said:

Also, I know Apple just started with 16 GB of RAM being standard, but would 8 GB be enough?

MacOS is a bit more friendly than Windows is with lower RAM amounts, though the sheer fact that Apple has stopped making the 8GB options is enough for me to say to try and avoid it if you can. You can probably get by, but wait future software updates I have my doubts for how practical that would be. 

[Haswellx86]

1 hour ago, nether1234 said:

I think we are looking to stay around $1,000 or less. Sister has an iPhone, so just assuming she would want to stay in the Apple ecosystem just to make things simple.

You can't have Apple ecosystem and low budget at the same time, but a grand should be enough to get a modest Macbook like the Macbook air (but if it is refurbished, then you can get something a bit better). If you value performance, you can probably get a lot for your money by getting a PC laptop.

 

You should tell what your sister is learning. Based on that I can suggest if you should get a Mac or a PC.

[Haswellx86]

17 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

As someone who daily's a macbook, just having all my software installed takes up about 150-200GB.

What software? Premier Pro and 10 games? If you are only really surfing the web, you don't need much storage. 256 is kind of plenty for that. It just depends on what you want to store.

[nether1234]

50 minutes ago, Haswellx86 said:

What software? Premier Pro and 10 games? If you are only really surfing the web, you don't need much storage. 256 is kind of plenty for that. It just depends on what you want to store.

She's going to school to become a teacher, so I feel like she wouldn't really need any software and all her classwork would be cloud/web based. I also don't believe she games either. 

[RONOTHAN##]

1 hour ago, Haswellx86 said:

What software? Premier Pro and 10 games?

No, just a bunch of smaller things. Chrome, Office, Discord, Handbrake, VLC, and a couple IDEs I needed for school. I did just check the file storage breakdown though and it was a bit more documents heavy than I thought, but software itself still took up about 75GB and with data for said software, I'd still say that 256GB can go a bit too quickly for comfort. 

[Darkseth]

if Budget is enough, get one of the macbook Airs that start with 16gb Ram.

8gb will probably do the job, unless you do bigger stuff with IDEs (like a Docker backend, mobile app development (android emulator, ios simulator take some Ram), or many tabs. But 8gb can do quite much.
Regardless, 16gb are MUCH more futureproof for the years.

 

256gb are enough, unless you install a LOT of big Apps. But if you don't, and keep most stuff in the Cloud, no problem.

If you need more: Just get an external SSD.

[Tridefender]

On 11/12/2024 at 6:54 PM, nether1234 said:

I also don't believe she games either. 

Please get a direct quote instead of your speculation.

[nether1234]

1 minute ago, Tridefender said:

Please get a direct quote instead of your speculation.

She doesn't game.

[Tridefender]

1 hour ago, nether1234 said:

She doesn't game.

MacBook base model, air or pro depending on budget.

[Commodus]

On 11/12/2024 at 9:34 AM, nether1234 said:

So my little sister is in college and her laptop broke. The siblings (including me) are thinking of getting her a new laptop for Christmas and I have pretty much been tasked with this. I was thinking a refurbished one from Apple, but I have no idea was size SSD she would need. She is in school for becoming a teacher so I feel like most of her school work would be web based. Would 256 GB be enough or should we spring for something larger? Also, I know Apple just started with 16 GB of RAM being standard, but would 8 GB be enough?

The MacBook Air M2 with 16GB of RAM is apparently down to $749 on Amazon, and I would absolutely leap on that. Still great performance for the money and a wonderfully portable design. I'd just get it in a color other than Midnight if the price stays the same, since that can be fairly fingerprinty.

[rikitikitavi]

On 11/12/2024 at 6:34 AM, nether1234 said:

a refurbished one from Apple

Certified refurbs are great, but require hunting the site, if you are looking for a very specific model.

 

For storage : ask how she used her previous one. A cheap external drive to store videos/photos is always an option, but still a pain to carry around.

 

For RAM : I tried using M1 8GB for a week. My workload requires more than 16GB, so laptop was using SSD storage as a temporary RAM. I did not notice much difference in my work, while certain professionals would - some apps might even fail. So, for a non resource intensive casual work that might require more RAM time to time, your sister might be alright and not even notice anything on 8GB version.

 

Also as it was mentioned previously - M2 generation of blue colour is a fingerprint magnet. I'm biased towards 16GB, just because at some point it might be the breaking point, even thought not highly probable imho - I don't see many people with established "casual" workflow suddenly go from "I need a browser" to "I am doing machine learning".