MacBook Air 11-inch or MacBook Air 13-inch

It has been a dilemma for anyone who wishes to purchase a MacBook Air when MacBook Air 11-inch first came out. No one really knows the intention of Apple, introducing a laptop with 11-inch screen size. Still, a lot of people are calling it an Apple netbook. Well, to me or many other people, a netbook is only capable of performing light duty tasks mainly web browsing and document processing. With the specifications of MacBook Air 11-inch, it is far more superior to any netbooks in the market. The focus is always on Apple products. No one seems to know about Sony Vaio Z series or Lenovo Ideapad U260 or Dell Adamo.

Truthfully, I had the same dilemma as I set my eyes on MacBook Air. I was first attracted to MacBook Air 11-inch because of the price and portability. Gradually, I favoured MacBook Air 13-inch also because of the price. Eventually, I bought MacBook Air 13-inch.

Apple website is easy enough to navigate and information is as straightforward as it can be. Even so, I found myself comparing the price and specifications stated on the website over and over again. I visited Apple iStore umpteen times just to look at the difference of the two. 11-inch or 13-inch keeps flashing in my mind until the day I received it.

One thing that you need to know or you may have already known is the MacBook Air hardware is not upgradeable once you received it. So, MacBook Air 11-inch or MacBook Air 13-inch?

Screen Size

A difference of 2 inches really make a great deal. MBA 11-inch has a resolution of 1368 X 768 and everything fits nicely in the screen, except that things look a little bit smaller than usual. Most users said that they get used to it after a while. MBA 13-inch on the other hand is a proper laptop at a screen resolution of 1440 X 900. With that, you get more viewing area with great screen size. I have a 19-inch desktop monitor and I didn’t miss it since I have the MBA 13-inch.

Portability

MBA 11-inch is great when you tend to travel a lot. The size is almost the same as an iPad. Frequent travellers would appreciate that it can be used on the plane without having to worry about the front passenger who might recline the seat suddenly. Users in the same situation would struggle with the MBA 13-inch. Even so, MBA 13-inch is about the same weight as most 10-inch netbooks in the market. Thus, carrying MBA 13-inch is not going to be the same as carrying normal 13-inch laptops.

Power

MBA 11-inch has the options of 1.4GHz or 1.6GHz processor while MBA 13-inch has the options of 1.86GHz or 2.13Ghz processor. A difference of about 0.2GHz seems little but in my opinion, it’s a lot. Back in the old days, I have a desktop powered by Intel Celeron 300MHz. A desktop with similar configuration but equipped with Intel Celeron 500MHz would easily blow my desktop away.

Another difference between MBA 11-inch and MBA 13-inch is the bus speed. MBA 11-inch is clocked at 800MHz while MBA 13-inch is clocked at 1066MHz. Again, the 200MHz is quite a lot of difference. Bus speed is the speed how data is transmitted across the motherboard. It also determines the speed of the RAM.

RAM

2GB of RAM is the standard configuration while 4GB of RAM option is available to all except MBA 11-inch 1.4GHz configuration. I would certainly recommend anyone to get the 4GB RAM upgrade if you are going to anything more than just browsing and word processing.

Solid State Disk

SSD is really fast. Imagine that booting up my MBA 13-inch took about 5 – 10 seconds while 2 seconds to wake up from sleep. There are choices of 64GB and 128GB for MBA 11-inch or 128GB and 256GB for MBA 13-inch. 64GB is more than enough to do simple tasks but you will be stuck at 2GB of RAM. With 128GB, your MBA is a little more future proof I should say. Anyway, portable hard disks are getting cheaper, thinner and bigger storage by day.

SD Card

This so called ‘luxury’ is only available on MBA 13-inch. I am really glad that I considered it in the end. At first, I always thought that a multi-card reader was the alternative. However, I have recently bought a Canon S95 and a 16GB SDHC card which my multi-card reader doesn’t support. Hence, the sd card reader on my MBA 13-inch comes in handy. I can always travel around with my Canon S95 and MBA 13-inch without an additional card reader.

DVD ROM Drive

Both MBA 11-inch and MBA 13-inch do not have any DVD or CD ROM drive. MBA comes with a thumb drive that allows users to restore their MBAs to the original state. Cool!

Operating System

Mac OS X is the standard operating system for any Mac products. Well, this section is not relevant with the topic but it will do some help for Windows users who are in dilemma. If you are familiar with Windows, it will be easy enough to use Mac OS X. Mac OS X is simple and less hassle. I love the multi touch pad. Controlling Mac OS X using the multi touch pad is nothing like navigating Windows using a touch pad.

When using a Windows powered laptop, I always fancy a mouse. In addition, Windows touch pad usually has the silly horizontal and vertical bar at the bottom and the side of the touch pad respectively for scrolling. With Mac OS X multi touch pad, I only need to use two-finger scrolling and I can use it on anywhere of the touch pad.

Settings are easily located and very straightforward. There is no Add/Remove Programs thing. All you need to do is to drag a program into the application folder and to delete it, just move it from the application folder to the trash.

A lot of people say that Mac OS X is very stable compared to Windows. I don’t really agree with that but I just thought that it is quite easy to use yet it can also be complicated if you are into terminal and command things.

Conclusion

Both MBA 11-inch and MBA 13-inch are good for travellers. To me, MBA 11-inch wins over users who would like to have something more than a netbook. On the other hand, MBA 13-inch is for someone who would like to have a reasonable size laptop but also with great portability.

I was initially going after the full specifications of MBA 11-inch; 1.6GHz, 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD. On second thought, the price is almost the same as MBA 13-inch with 1.86GHz, 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD. With the same amount of money, I get a faster and bigger screen size of MacBook Air. I am a semi-frequent traveller and I dislike the 10-inch screen size. Sometimes, I have the need to do photo editing as well as work from home. Hence, I went for MacBook Air 13-inch.