MacBook Air CPU Performance

Hello all. I'm intending to sell my current MacBook Pro and buy a new Macbook Air, after the Haswell refresh. However, I was hoping to confirm that for general use-nothing especially CPU intensive-I won't notice a drop in performance next to my current machine. I've always been somewhat sceptical of ULV CPU's, though am wondering whether that scepticism is justified here.

Thanks!

 

If you're not doing anything CPU-intensive (scientific computing, BF3, other stuff like that), then a ULV should be fine for you.

 

I went from a dual-core Core i7 13" MBP (early 2011) to a dual-core Core i5 13" MBA (mid-2011) and didn't notice a difference in day-to-day performance. I really only noticed a slowdown when I encoded DVDs with Handbrake. That would take about 30 minutes on the MBP and 45 minutes on the MBA. My current MBP (15", mid-2012) can do the same task in 18 minutes. Other than that, even when running a Windows 7 virtual machine with MATLAB, I didn't notice a difference between my 13" MBP and MBA. I enjoyed the MBA much more as it was smaller, offered the same perceptive performance, and I didn't feel like I wasted my money like I did splurging for the Core i7 upgrade in the 13" MBP.

 

This is just the sort of comparison I was looking for-thanks. Now time to see whether I can get a bid on eBay for the Mac in my signature...

 

That shouldn't be an issue. Macs tend to hold a rather high resale value and you should be able to get at least $700 for your MBP, probably more since electronics like that on eBay tend to sell for way too high of prices. For example, my girlfriend just sold an HP notebook she had. It was a basic Core i3 processor, Intel HD 3000 graphics, 500GB hard drive, 4GB of RAM, Windows 7, and a 15" 1366X768 display. It set her back by $400 a year ago and carries about a $200-$250 value today. It sold on eBay for $375.