Mulling My MacBook Air

[canyonwalker]

It struck me recently that my personal computer, a MacBook Air, is over 4 years old now. In fact, at 4 years 4 months it's basically the same age as the age at which I replaced my first AirThis comes at a time when Apple has gotten a lot of attention in the technical press for its latest models of the MacBook and MacBook Air. ...And the iPad, for

Comments

[some_other_dave]

Heh. Mine is a bit over five years old at this point, and I've been going through the same kind of analysis. Yes, the storage is the biggest reason to swap. My old Air is still running well for pretty much everything I want to do with it, with a couple of exceptions

[canyonwalker]

Hawk and I both optioned our machines with 256GB SSD in 2015-2016. That was a step-up configuration back then though it's the base configuration today. At first it was plenty of space, particularly as we upgraded from machines with half or less that storage. But digital media libraries grow, and that has become the pinch point for both of us: digital photos for me and downloaded movies for her, and both of us have fair iTunes music libraries, too.

I found a reasonable pressure-relief valve in buying a Samsung T5 SSD. The .5 TB model is running less than $90 at major online retailer lately, and there are larger models, too. I offloaded my older pictures to it; it's so small that it's trivial to carry everywhere in my computer bag, so I'll always have it with me wherever I take my computer. Also, it's fast, as it's SSD storage and has a USB 3.0 interface. Hawk bought one, too, but didn't like the fuss of dealing with an external peripheral. To me it's a non-issue, so make your own decision.

[canyonwalker]

...Also, while using 'du' from a command shell has its uses, you know you can also select Finder > View > Show View Options (shortcut Command-J) and then enable "Calculate all sizes". It shows the total size within each folder subtree. The setting is per folder, not global, though it is inherited.