Macbook Air for coding?

[mickey]

Do many of you CUKs use Macbook Air for coding? 4GB RAM is probably on the low side for e.g. running eclipse + Java on a Mountain Lion.

WDYT?

[d000hg]

I use an old MacBook (2008 model) suoped up to the maximum 4Gb it will support. This works just fine for Eclipse and is probably considerably lower specced than an Air in terms of CPU and disk-speed.

[eek]

I use an old MacBook (2008 model) suoped up to the maximum 4Gb it will support. This works just fine for Eclipse and is probably considerably lower specced than an Air in terms of CPU and disk-speed.

its got an ssd so should be fine. I assume you are wanting the 13" model as the screen resolution on the 11" seems a bit too small.

[mickey]

So the SSDs are not only sexy but they actually work?
They are so tiny still. Not convinced.

[NickFitz]

Done lots of work on my MBA, including with Eclipse. Runs absolutely fine, and it's two versions behind the latest model. I've even made use of Visual Studio running in a window on a Parallels VM, and it ran faster than on the desktop Windows PC the ClientCo I've just left had me using.

[NickFitz]

So the SSDs are not only sexy but they actually work?
They are so tiny still. Not convinced.

Don't fill it with junk. The latest version of Eclipse is 239.5MB, according to the download I did yesterday. If you don't clutter your drive up with music, videos, photos, and other stuff that you don't actually need access to very often, there's plenty of space. Keep all that crap on an external drive. If you're one of those weirdoes that listens to music as you work, put it on your phone.

[d000hg]

Done lots of work on my MBA, including with Eclipse. Runs absolutely fine, and it's two versions behind the latest model. I've even made use of Visual Studio running in a window on a Parallels VM, and it ran faster than on the desktop Windows PC the ClientCo I've just left had me using.

I also have W8 running though Parallels on my MacBook, since it's my only laptop and I want to use Visual Studio. It actually works reasonably well but it really doesn't like switching between mac/Win apps - probably running VS2008 inside W8 inside Parallels on a low-spec laptop is a bit OTT but it is usable.

[mickey]

So which one wins: 8GB+ RAM vs light ultrabook case?

[eek]

So which one wins: 8GB+ RAM vs light ultrabook case?

The £80 extra light ultrabook with 8gb of ram...

[London75]

I've even made use of Visual Studio running in a window on a Parallels VM, and it ran faster than on the desktop Windows PC the ClientCo I've just left had me using.

Same here, screen res is the killer for Visual Studio though hence Air is now sold and getting a MacBook Pro when they release the new one.