Biggest Decision of my life: macbook pro or macbook air?

In the summer of 2007 I began the transition from my undergrad career to my Ph.D career.  However there was a slight problem, I did not have a laptop.  Classes started in August and I could not get as much work done using just desktops, not to mention check email as frequently or accomplish other tasks online.  It seemed like a lot of people around me had macbooks (white or black plastic) or macbook pros and I really hated more or less everything about the Dells and other PCs people had.  With new PC designs coming out and the new Windows Vista OS I started leaning to a PC.  And why not?  The PC was more upgradable, cheaper and most of all cost a lot less.  At the last minute, I logged into our university’s student computer program where they get you a small discount from Apple or Dell, and noticed that if you bought a mac for college you’d get a free ipod and printer (also Apple care was a ~50% discount).  Anyways, I found an excuse to go to Delaware (no sales tax vs. 6% in MD) and got a white macbook, 230GB ipod, some random scanner and Apple care for $1, 400 after rebates.  I’ll write more about this later in a different post, but long story short: I was extremely happy with my macbook, it does everything I want and more (video editing, photoshop, runs windows, internet, etc) and has been serving me faithfully since 2007.  I noticed a lot going wrong with my macbook, the battery is dying and things are starting to slow down.  I have extensively modified it and sometimes reformat and reinstall to speed things up, but compared to other computers I have grown used to it is slow.  The exact specs are Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.16 GHz, 500GB 7,200rpm hard drive, 2 GB of DDR2 667MHz RAM and combo drive (DVD & DL-DVD).  I’m sad to move away from this great machine that is actually still working fine, but I must move on to bigger and better things.

Currently it is nearing the end of July 2012 and I really liked what I saw from Apple at the WWDC in June.  I know I need a new mac, but I’m stuck between a 13in macbook pro or 13in macbook air.  I’m very sure that I want to keep my cost under $1,800, but that leaves a lot open.  From previous experience I know not to buy the top of the line mac and I’m just ignoring the retina dispay macbook pro. 

So $1,800, what do I want out of my new mac?  Apple care, 8 GB of RAM, Ivybridge i5, SD card reader and that is it.  I’m still deciding to get a 500 GB hard drive or 256GB SSD.  If I go the solid state route, maybe I’ll have to carry around another drive, but the trade off is that SSD’s are really fast and don’t use a lot of power.  I don’t really care about a video card since the graphics capabilities of the new i5’s seem to be more than adequate.  The real question I have to address is to get the pro or air.  My specs listed above are available in both.  So what is the trade off?  One thing that really pisses me off is that they welded everything so that only Apple can add RAM, change the hard drive, replace the battery, etc (you basically can’t work on your computer).  The pro does have an optical drive, but I don’t use those that much and the external ones are cheap now (~$20).  So I’m just confused, pro or air?

Based on the tech spec tie between the two models it really comes down to preference.  Since I want my new laptop to be mobile and powerful I am leaning to the macbook air.  I plan to basically set it up so that I can get great power in a very efficient package.  The slower processor i5 1.8GHz should handle almost anything and save a lot more power than an i7.  Since I plan to have some virtual machines, do video editing and some other stuff I’ll take the 8GB of RAM.  I do not really want to over pay Apple for a 512GB SSD, but the 256GB SSD should allow me to hold a bit of data and work.  Later I’ll go out and buy one of those waterproof / shock-proof 2.5in external hard drives.  The USB 3.0 should make reading from it almost like the drive is SATA connected in my computer.  Screw the remote, I got one with my last mac and hardly use it.  I’ll probably have to go on amazon and buy a knock-off thunder bolt to VGA or DVI adapter so I can give power points.  So the macbook air (i5, 256GB SSD, 8 GB RAM) will be my new mac.  I can get the same thing in the pro model, but I expect the air to have a longer battery life and be more mobile.