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I have a HP pavillion core 2 duo 2 GHz and 4 GB RAM, and it is painful to use this machine for any kind of coding. Eclipse (especially Juno) literally takes 5 minutes to load. And even after that, everything is lagy.

Apart from school stuff, I also use my computer as a television. I watch Hulu, Netflix, YouTube etc in 720p, and this laptop gets hot as hell and the fans are loud enough to wake somebody up from deep sleep.

I DON'T use my laptop for Gaming or Video/Photo Editing.

I'm looking to buy a new apple laptop (in which most widely used IDEs would work smoothly and playing hi-def videos wouldn't be too much for the machine to handle) any suggestions (on hardware specs) would be greatly appreciated. Also, the retina display macbook pros are NOT an option for me.

Thanks

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Apple currently sells six laptops. You've ruled out two, it seems clear the 11" MacBook Air would be a bad fit, that only leaves three. They're all good enough for programming work and can all "handle" video playback, so the determining factor is probably which one makes the best video player. How else can we help narrow it down? – Dan J Nov 7 '12 at 23:25

closed as not constructive by bassplayer7, Nathan Greenstein♦ Nov 8 '12 at 0:00

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1 Answer

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The MacBook Air Mid 2012 13".

Has the same advantages of the MacBook Pro 13" Retina but lighter and without the Retina screen. The 11" will become annoying due to screen real estate.

The ultra mobile i5 should not cause any problems for coding and the SSD will means things load faster.

If you think you will need space (and not use and external / network drive) then the Pro non-retina 13" might be more suitable.

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This strikes me a non-constructive question, but you've answered so I'll throw my two cents in: I have a 2011 13" MacBook Air and, since the OP's main bottleneck is going to be watching a lot of internet video, would recommend one of the MacBooks Pro instead. The MBA will spend a lot of time with the fan at full blast and get pretty poor battery life if you're using it in place of a television. – Dan J Nov 7 '12 at 23:31
TBH its noo a very constructive question, but hey, figured some one can moderate if need be. My assumption was that the Air would be plugged in whilst watching video / being used as a media screen. The Pro 13" Retina makes no fan noise watching 720p video so I assume the 13" Air would be similar, due to a very similar chipset, although I have no experience with the Airs in this situation. – markfknight Nov 7 '12 at 23:42

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