<p>Which is the better choice for college? I'm getting S1 a Mac and want to know which to get? If we get the air we will also get him an external cd-rom drive.</p>
<p>The Air is MUCH lighter. I think of the Pro as a portable desktop. We got our D an external optical drive with her Air and she never took it out of the box.</p>
<p>13" Air has a superior screen and less weight, 13" Pro has the ability to be opened up and customized. Airs all come with SSDs now, so will be noticeably faster at the tradeoff of less memory space. If anything, buy him an external hard drive.</p>
<p>I have never used my optical drive in 3 years at college so far.</p>
<p>For most people the MacBook Air 13" would be better.</p>
<p>After seeing the MBA 13" in person , I definitely think it’s a nice computer but there are some downsides for some people ( no user upgrades , not good for intensive simulations , etc).</p>
<p>“not good for intensive simulations”</p>
<p>Just curious, why not? What’s the difference?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Between the MBA 13" and the MBP 13" , the MBA 13" has a much slower CPU.</p>
<p>ULV CPUs are always slower than their full voltage counterparts.</p>
<p>If you run CPU intensive calculations you’ll definitely notice that the MBA 13" is slower but most people who use a MBA 13" just do basic stuff and not heavy physics , statistics , etc. calculations.</p>
<p>A 20% increase ( based on ** some ** benchmarks between the fastest CPU in the MBA 13" and the MBP 13") in CPU power does make a difference when some simulations can take hours.</p>
<p>I’ve seen some material science simulations take over 12 hours on an Intel Xeon CPU from 2009.</p>
<p>The advantages the MBP 13" provides are minimal for most people since they probably aren’t going to upgrade it themselves and they aren’t going to need the extra CPU power.</p>
<p>Thanks, I thought it was just CPU speed, but wasn’t sure.</p>
<p>The Air may actually be faster for some random disk I/O intensive applications, having zero disk seek and rotational latency delays. It sure boots a lot faster!</p>
<p>Though how many undergraduates will be doing something that intensive? Not many.</p>
<p>If the school doesn’t provide the necessary hardware to perform said tasks, then a desktop would be a better solution.</p>
<p>As it stands, most undergraduates (that I’ve seen) use their Macbook Pros as glorified typewriters capable of social media. That’s about it. That’s why in my opinion, the Air is a much better choice with SSD options integrated by default.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The GPU on the ULV CPUs also runs at a slower max clock speed but it wouldn’t matter much anyway since neither the MBP 13" or MBA 13" are gaming or CAD machines. </p>
<p>By default the MBA includes a SSD so it would boot up faster and load programs faster than a regular MBP. SSDs really make computers feel responsive and fast.</p>
<p>So basically the MBA 13" is the best choice for people who are in between the MBA 13" and the MBP 13."</p>
<p>Personally, I was given the choice between the 13" air and 13" pro and went for the pro. From what know the pro is more durable than the air (this coming from people I know with airs that were dropped from a low height and broke). Also, most people don’t need all the speed the air is capable of. Plus, I only got my pro because my '07 macbook became darn near unusable and the pro was much more like the now defunct regular macbook.</p>