MacBook Air
I don't think so, you should be fine. I always recommend getting the most memory you can in case you want to run something bigger, like VMWare or Parallels, but for your stated use it will run great! You won't notice any difference in your experience between 2GB and 4GB.
I recently bought the 64 GB, 2 GB RAM model and it is running smoothly. I use it for Pages and Word documents as well as Keynote's and Powerpoint's. I also use it for the internet as well as mail.
I was was a little unsure about buying the 2 GB model but in an effort to save some money (it adds up after buying the accessories) I took a chance. I always thought that if I didn't like it I can take it back and exchange it for the 4GB model.
So far, for the work I'm doing, no issues.
And at the end of the day, that is what matters. If it works for you, then you did good!!! There are a lot of folks in the internet that use computers for a lot of things, and we sometimes forget 90% of people use it for basic productivity and communications and don't need 8GB of RAM and 3TB of disk space. That's for us geeks... 🙂
Thanks All,
I tracked down an 'Walt Mossberg' Oct 2010 review of the Macbook Air:
"I was surprised to find that even the base $999 model was powerful enough to easily run seven or eight programs at once, including Microsoft Office, iTunes and the Safari browser with more than 20 Web sites open. It also played high-definition video with no skipping or stuttering."
I have the 2010 model with 64GB storage and 2GB RAM. It ran surprisingly well under 10.6, although I didn't push the system very often, and I never regretted failing to upgrade the memory. Since upgrading to Lion I notice that RAM usage is higher and performance is slightly less than it had been. I expect that Lion will be tuned over the coming months but it seems that you may be happier with the additional memory for your usage.
My only concern with the 2GB of RAM is long term dependability. If you look at the computing landscape, RAM is on about a two and a half to three year cycle of relevancy. Three years ago, 2GB of RAM was standard on most of Apple's product offers. Six years ago, 1GB of RAM was standard on Apple's portable line up.
Six years - 1
Three years - 2
Today - 4
Using that system, in 2 to 3 years from now will 2GB of RAM be adequate for your needs? It's difficult to say, everyone's needs will be different. But I think it's important to keep that in mind.
I've had an MBA 13.3" 2010 model for about 8 months now and it's 2GB of RAM has been plenty. I've had multiple programs open including Pages, iTunes, 5 Safari windows, YouTube, mail and more and it has never skipped a beat. I've even had all of the above open while burning an audio CD with a SuperDrive.
For what I do, it's been great.
Sly
2011 Macbook Air - 2gb ram will kill me?
