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New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

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Re: New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

#191

Post by davidst »

LetBinding wrote: post #179

I am about to embark on a 18-month long data mining project, where I'll be developing Python NLP software for recognizing patterns in textual data. Will the MBA be a good machine for this? Ideally I should get something with more horsepower, but if the MBA suffices, then I feel its portability will really increase my productivity.

Is 4GB RAM enough for your project? If so, you're probably fine.

I do a lot of statistical ML (feel free to AMA) and chafe at the 32GB limit of the machines I'm using.

Re: New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

#192

Post by vegai »

milestinsley wrote: post #75
vegai wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit superfluous, but I don't think it's too much. Besides, the OS can use the extra memory as cache/buffers.

I think he was referring to 4GB as being too little . If you are doing anything involving photos/video/audio editing, you are probably going to want at least 8GB.

I think I was oh-too-cleverly pointing out the absurdity of having so much memory in a laptop and thinking it might not be enough.

Re: New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

#194

Post by LetBinding »

davidst wrote: post #191
LetBinding wrote: post #179

I am about to embark on a 18-month long data mining project, where I'll be developing Python NLP software for recognizing patterns in textual data. Will the MBA be a good machine for this? Ideally I should get something with more horsepower, but if the MBA suffices, then I feel its portability will really increase my productivity.

Is 4GB RAM enough for your project? If so, you're probably fine. I do a lot of statistical ML (feel free to AMA) and chafe at the 32GB limit of the machines I'm using.

I could use all the RAM available. Ideally I would need 8 GB. But my thinking is that with the high I/O throughput of the SSD in the Air, swapping from disk won't lead to a perceptible performance drop.

I will occasionally have access to a server for particularly intensive tasks. But I would like to be able to code from my bed, in a coffee shop, library, bus, etc. Hence my fascination for the Air.

What kind of stuff do you do that uses up 32 GB RAM? Is your data set huge, or are your algorithms RAM intensive?

Re: New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

#195

Post by joeguilmette »

markbao wrote: post #168
joeguilmette wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i bought the maxed out 13" last year as well. pulling out my credit card...

Don't do it! You really don't have more important things to spend $2000 on? Fight the power :)

I'm selling my current model for about what I spent on it (got an employee discount from a friend). So it's only costing about $200 to upgrade :)

Re: New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

#196

Post by davidst »

LetBinding wrote: post #194
davidst wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is 4GB RAM enough for your project? If so, you're probably fine. I do a lot of statistical ML (feel free to AMA) and chafe at the 32GB limit of the machines I'm using.

I could use all the RAM available. Ideally I would need 8 GB. But my thinking is that with the high I/O throughput of the SSD in the Air, swapping from disk won't lead to a perceptible performance drop. I will occasionally have access to a server for particularly intensive tasks. But I would like to be able to code from my bed, in a coffee shop, library, bus, etc. Hence my fascination for the Air. What kind of stuff…

I'm gathering statistics on words, phrases and a few other things from a medium-sized (about a terabyte) corpus. There are several billion that aren't hapaxes. That's just the initial feature collection pass. Next, I'm looking for correlations among these features. It's a challenge to make it fit in 32GB. A lot of effort goes into bit-twiddling to make things fit and into algorithms that try to be intelligent about what to keep and what to discard.

Re: New MacBook Air Now Available on Apple Store

#197

Post by listic »

kieranyo wrote: post #150
jolan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, quite a bit: http://ark.intel.com/compare/54617,54618,56858,36697

Win! Spoke to Apple, they are going to refund and take away my 16 day old MacBook Air so that I can order the new one :) Excellent customer service once again.

It's a win unless you don't care about the downgrade in graphics performance (nVidia > Intel GMA) and power consumption (Core2 > i7). In these regards the latest model looks like a downgrade, at least on paper.

I'm appalled that noone seems to notice or care about those things, especially power consumption.

Graphics performance: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark... search for "NVIDIA GeForce 320M" and "Intel HD Graphics 3000". Intel has a history GPU's with poor perfomance and feature support.

Power consumption: on this very table, look at TDP http://ark.intel.com/compare/54617,54618,56858,36697

Pentium M(2004) = 5W http://ark.intel.com/products/27609/Intel-Pentium-M-Processo...

Core2(2008) = 10W

i7(2011) = 17W

Despite the shrinking of the electronics Apple even had to raise weight a little in the latest model, to accomodate a battery large enough to provide the same "5-7" hours of runtime. That's when you are mostly idling or browsing; I'm sure the new Air will run hotter and shorter if you utilize your CPU closer to 100%. Well, customers want an "upgrade", and there are no better parts available; what else can you do?

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