Macbook Air

[DJBambii]

Yeah , I was gonna get the twitch but decided I wanted to stay with something traktor specific

[mostapha]

lack of a decent size hd puts me off.

I wouldn't worry about it. I used a 64GB SSD in my last MB for a couple years, and I never had much of an issue. You have to keep your music under control, but you really can't remember 10,000 records…so why even bring them? Just bring what you want to spin.

The biggest issue came from the fact that I use my one laptop for everything. I had a lot of my production stuff installed on a FW external, my photo and music archives were on externals, and I had to be really picky about the movies that I kept on my laptop…but it wasn't an issue. I do remember having to delete all of the movies for the couple weeks I was dual-booting linux for a dev project that needed it. But it still worked just fine.

Also, if money isn't an issue, OWC sells aftermarket SSDs for the MacBook Air. They're not cheap, but they're better drives and come up to 480 GB.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Aura_Pro_Express

I have a Mercury Extreme Pro 6G (similar drive, just for 3.5" bay instead of the MBA's tiny little on-board thing) in my MBP and it's brilliant. 6 months of use and no slowdown at all in benchmarks or real-world use. While there are a few that can compete, IMHO, it's not worth using a laptop without one of their drives.

screen size might be an issue

That's a legitimate concern, but most of the time I feel like my 13" MBP is too big. If I need a bigger screen for production or photo editing…I'll plug it into a bigger screen. When you're talking about a laptop…12" is about ideal IMHO. That being said, how big a screen you need really depends on how you use Traktor. I like the second-smallest size decks, and I always use the Only Browser view for selecting tracks, so a lot of my screen is wasted. I also haven't even seen Traktor on an 11" screen…so maybe someone who has one could take a screen shot if that would answer your question.

[rdaletaylor]

I'm gunning for the wife's approval on the 13". My aging MB runs traktor fine, the air looks up to par, with more ram and what not than I'm running now.

[moss2626]

Had a macbook air , managed just fine to run serato scratch live or traktor scratch pro . Only problem i have with it is that your limited to what it comes with . No way to upgrade ram or hdd .

[mostapha]

Had a macbook air , managed just fine to run serato scratch live or traktor scratch pro . Only problem i have with it is that your limited to what it comes with . No way to upgrade ram or hdd .

That's true for ram, but not for the SSD. See the link above.

[DJBambii]

So basically I should be good using it and just having an external for all my production shiz rihgt ? Because Im only 16 and im still underparent dictator ship, they wouldnt let me have two laptops. So im trying to figure out if its worth getting rid of this peice of junk Dell(Though I do love the 750gb harddrive) for an Air

[moss2626]

@mostapha oh i didn't know the new ones could be changed i had the first gen , which had the 4200 rpm harddrive . Well you could change it , but it would still be a 4200 rpm drive, only a bit more space .

DJBambii If your dell works alright don't change it for no reason . If it's acting up , i would suggest you look at some macbook pro's rather than air's

[DJBambii]

The Dell has an overheating problem, and a MBP is WAYYY over my budget XD Thats why I decided for the Air

[mostapha]

The air is not a great laptop. I kind of want one at some point, but I want it for daily tasks and so I can dedicate my MBP to music. It's just a size thing.

The bottom-end 13" pro is only $200 more than the bottom-end air, and the bottom-end pro will do whatever you want to do regarding DJing or Production as long as you're comfortable with bouncing to audio every now and then if your synths get too hard to make on the fly. Then again, turning up the latency would achieve the same.

Especially considering that the 4GB of ram is worth paying for (I don't think you can upgrade ram aftermarket), you might want to look into the bottom-end MBP. Mine has an aftermarket SSD that cost like $400 by itself, but even without that the laptop is impressive.

[moss2626]

From what i can see on apple's website , there isn't that much of a difference . You could buy a used one from 2010 for a really good price ...