<p>My sister is going to buy a Mac, she's only in 10th grade. We chose a Mac because we would expect it to last during her college years and so on. I have a Mac Pro, now.
So most college students get a Pro. A Pro can handle about loads of work, by just looking at it, since it has a CD drive. If she was to get an Air, would she be limited since an Air can't really do as much as a Pro can? I want her to get an Air because of the cheap price under education but I don't want to ruin her options that an Air has compare to a Pro, which is more pricey.</p>
<p>For a typical high school/college student, an Air is just fine
Also, the Pros that have the greater work capacity don’t have CD drives anymore.</p>
<p>MacBook Air 13" would be great. </p>
<p>Honestly, I’m really not to fond of either of the newest iterations of these models. They are ubiquitous among students, but fall flat in some areas.</p>
<p>I have a Mac Pro desktop (not book pro). Love it. When it came time to get a new laptop, I looked at the Macbook Pro first stop. Didn’t like it. Only the smallest one has a CD drive and 13" is a bit too small for me. Other than that the ergonomics suck. It’s sharp and angular, the keyboard really isn’t comfortable.</p>
<p>I ended up going with an Alienware 17. Built like a tank and comfy as heck. </p>
<p>The Macbook Airs do not have a retina display yet. You can live without it, though Apple says the new OS (Yosemite) is optimized for the retina display.</p>
<p>I think a more important consideration is RAM, especially if your sister expects to use the Mac for the next 6 years. I would opt for 8GB. While she can always upgrade the memory later (not user installable, though), a lot of people don’t do it. Over a period of 6 years, you can expect that new versions of the OS and more memory intensive websites will appear. By the third or fourth year of use, you’ll find the system choking at only 4 GB of RAM.</p>
<p>You also should consider whether the entry level models of both the Macbook Air and the Retina Macbook Pro have a big enough hard drive at 128GB. I would opt for at least 256MB. There also is a non-Retina model of the Macbook Pro with a 500 GB hard drive, which should be more than enough, but it’s a mechanical hard drive rather than solid state. It should be fine, though the solid state drives are a bit faster and possibly less prone to fail. </p>
<p>The 500 GB Macbook Pro still has a CD/DVD drive. If she gets a model without a CD/DVD drive, she can always get an external one if she needs it. Many think they need one, but seldom use it. They’re on their way out, as most people use thumb drives, streaming, or another means to transfer data. </p>
<p>If she gets a Macbook Air, I would suggest she get at least the 13" model. The 11" model will be too small for writing papers, especially when you have multiple windows open.</p>
<p>A Macbook Air can do everything a Macbook Pro can do. The usual consideration for people choosing the Air is that it’s thinner and somewhat lighter. I don’t think of that as a big deal, but some people do.</p>
<p>Just keep in mind that the old MPB is kind of heavy and the MBA is very light. If she’s not going to do anything but surf the web, write documents, listen to music, possibly facetime/skype, I don’t see a problem with buying a MBA. The only thing I would suggest is that she buys the 13" instead of the 11" because it may be too small.</p>
<p>A MacBook Air is just fine. I have the 2013 base 13" model, and it runs everything beautifully.</p>
<p>Can you get more power for more money? Absolutely, with the MacBook Pro. But it’s not necessary unless your daughter is going to do highly intensive computer work, like graphics design.</p>
<p>Do NOT get the old MacBook Pro with a CD drive. Apple is going to ditch the product soon. Get a MacBook Pro with Retina Display, or a MacBook Air.</p>
<p>By the way, I don’t mean to sound supercilious, but a Mac Pro and MacBook Pro are two entirely different products. A Mac Pro is a desktop computer for professional graphics work/design, and costs upwards of $10,000. A MacBook Pro, however, is a laptop meant for lighter workloads.</p>
<p>To EVERYONE: thanks, by the way, my sister actually got a Mac Book Pro 13 (refurbished). It works great. </p>