Should I: Upgrade Parts, Upgrade to Used, Wait & Purchase New
Macbook Air, 11” early 2014, i5, 4gb RAM - Battery: Replace Soon 1300+ cycles
I’m a photographer. Often my Air is enough to do what needs to be done, minimal post-processing edits, anything heavier I often have access to a professional work station.
I’m considering purchasing a separate Eizo self-calibrating screen for color-critical work at home. Thus, upgrading for an improved screen isn’t a top priority.
However, faster processing, and the ability to run Photoshop, Lightroom, and Firefox along with Telegram and maybe, gasp, even Spotify, would be nice. That said, my PS and LR tasks are not really that heavy with processing, unless I’m working with a medium format Flextight scan, where the single image file size can be up to 1gb, yes, a single .TIFF at 1gb. I can get the beach ball from clone stamping, but I rarely have to do this, as I go to extreme lengths to make my scans clean. As it stands I only open LR or PS if everything else is closed, and only use one of the programs at a time and I get by just fine.
The only other thing it would be nice to have improved would be the file transfer speeds. I’m using USB 3.0, but even still…
Options:
I see I can upgrade my logic board to the i7 8gb RAM option, and I can replace my battery, and I can clean up my fan and vents, maybe put some new thermal paste on.
I could (with advice) purchase a used Air, MB, Pro.
Or I could keep saving and wait to purchase a new computer sometime later this year or early next year. But I’d only be doing so for improved processing power.
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At what point in either upgrading my parts, upgrading to a different used computer, or purchasing new, am I going to noticeable difference?
Maybe this isn’t the right question.
Maybe the question I’m actually trying to ask is something like, how much of a difference in performance would I notice between the cheapest new Mac Air compared to, say, a 2018 Air, compared to my current MBA with an upgraded logic board?
Cette question est-elle utile ?