Buying my first Macbook

Shanew14

Hi all,

Firstly I am completely uneducated regarding macbooks, but I am sick of expensive laptops letting me down.

So I am looking at a macbook air, its main use will be for Football Manager, College work and internet browsing.

The specs are:
1.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz) with 3MB shared L3 cache

4GB of 1600MHz LPDDR3 onboard memory
Configurable to 8GB.

Intel HD Graphics 5000

128GB PCIe-based flash storage

Can someone tell me are these decent specs for a mac, its second hand and costing 480 euro, 2014 model

Also as it is second hand, is there anything I should look out for when testing it out before I buy as it is on adverts.ie.

Apologies for my ignorance on this topic,

and many thanks in advance for your replies,

Shane.

DubDJ

The macbook air is a portable machine rather than a powerful one. It's aimed at somebody who needs portability rather than a top spec machine.

If you don't intend on doing anything too power intensive then you should be OK. I will say 4GB of RAM is the minimum i'd recommend these days. And macs aren't usually able to be upgraded after they leave the factory these days with RAM and storage soldered.

It is a decent price for a fairly recent MBA as long as its in good condition. The PCIe based SSD will make a noticable difference to speeding it up too.

Check battery cycle count, maybe test the stuff like wifi, Bluetooth are working and trackpad etc. Just normal everyday things.

Wrong forum BTW, you might get more answers in the Mac forum.

Shanew14

DubDJ wrote: »

The macbook air is a portable machine rather than a powerful one. It's aimed at somebody who needs portability rather than a top spec machine.

If you don't intend on doing anything too power intensive then you should be OK. I will say 4GB of RAM is the minimum i'd recommend these days. And macs aren't usually able to be upgraded after they leave the factory these days with RAM and storage soldered.

It is a decent price for a fairly recent MBA as long as its in good condition. The PCIe based SSD will make a noticable difference to speeding it up too.

Check battery cycle count, maybe test the stuff like wifi, Bluetooth are working and trackpad etc. Just normal everyday things.

Wrong forum BTW, you might get more answers in the Mac forum.

Perfect thanks a million for your help, what would you say is an acceptable battery cycle reading?

DubDJ

Shanew14 wrote: »

Perfect thanks a million for your help, what would you say is an acceptable battery cycle reading?

Most newer Macs will max out at 1,000 cycles so try to estimate based on that. On a two year old MacBook Air you wouldn't be expecting a low number but good to ask just in case the battery is faulty.

Shanew14

DubDJ wrote: »

Most newer Macs will max out at 1,000 cycles so try to estimate based on that. On a two year old MacBook Air you wouldn't be expecting a low number but good to ask just in case the battery is faulty.

Perfect thanks a mill mate!

Blazer

Shanew14 wrote: »

Can someone tell me are these decent specs for a mac, its second hand and costing 480 euro, 2014 model

Also as it is second hand, is there anything I should look out for when testing it out before I buy as it is on adverts.ie.

Shane.

sorry but there's no way you're getting a 2014 model macbook air for that price unless there's a serious issue with it.
in case its this one it's icloud locked..its only good for parts.

http://www.adverts.ie/macbook-air/icloud-lock-macbook-air-2014/9697312