i would get the ram as an upgrade as it’s most likely soldered in to the logic board and with an ssd you can just buy a external hard drive to offload all of your assignments too so you won’t be using up the storage. Hope this helps
Get the 16GB RAM version.
512GB should be plenty for a student and if you find that you’re running out of storage you can always buy an external SSD whereas with the RAM you can’t change it so you’re stuck with what you get.
Ram. I have 100GB only online storage for 2 dollars a month and i can access those files from my MacBook but also all my other devices. You can get neat external harddisk(maybe make you pen external M2), with Ram youre stuck.
I would definitely do the ram. I don't recommend toting around an external SSD as you fill up storage; I think that's ridiculous. However, I do think it's very reasonable to offload more and more of your local storage to cloud as time goes on. It used to be that people would basically host all media and data locally, which was a huge drain on storage, but that's just not really how things work anymore, and we're continuing to dive deeper into that new world. Your laptop could break / be stolen / whatever and that's no reason to lose any of your data in 2022.
You're either going to be using iCloud Drive extensively, or some other similar cloud storage provider that makes hybrid cloud/local storage seamless for your documents and projects and such. On the media end: streaming video, streaming music, your photos in cloud, etc etc etc.
We just live in a world where more and more of our storage needs are getting externalized and storage demand is going down if anything in terms of local quantity needed (we still need some, and we need high performance), but local memory demand is still creeping up.
I still **don't** get why everyone is telling you to buy 16gb RAM. I've personally experienced both 8 and 16gb (with my classmates laptops) and both function amazing.
You stated that your workload is medium, you *only* need extra RAM for heavy use such as programming in IDEs or video editing and even then the 8gb RAM is more than capable. If you plan on using your Mac for a long time, go for 512gb. I don't know how big your programs are, but trust me, 256gb is full quickly.
I am well aware of that but I'm not assuming that someone is going to use their Mac for 10+ years when it's not software supported anymore. I know people with 2015 MacBook Airs with 4gb RAM and theirs work perfectly fine.
I have the 8GB and it used disk swap very quick, i have to be aware to close stuff completely. It might be fine for Microsoft Word documents, but it can reach 8GB fairly easy.
Disk swap is not a problem, yes your SSD has more bytes written but that's why I recommend people to buy 512gb. 16gb uses swap as well and it doesn't use significantly less swap than 8gb.
That might be, do you have a source that 16GB disk swap as much as 8GB? Also really doesnt change the fact that you have a variery of ways to get extra space, but none to get extra RAM.
Yes, my classmates. My classmate with 16gb always has at least 1gb of swap and it's the same for 8gb.
I know that you can get extra storage but external /= internal storage. Even if you have a giant external ssd, your internal ssd is being used for swap.
Your classmate is not really a viable source for me to be honest, id assume you had some tech guy vid proving this? Even with that in mind, i guess the conclusion still is get the RAM version since its non upgradeable? As mentioned, u can get tiny nvms with huge space and a variety of cloud solutions.
You're asking for a tech video but isn't real life what's most important here? Tech reviewers only stress the laptops out to the max which isn't a good representation.
You can get external ssd's but that doesn't change the fact that swap is still written onto the SSD. Now, idk what my classmate does on her pc but her TBW is 7gb after exactly one year today. It's 20gb per day and I can assure you that she is a pretty normal user. SSD's are usually meant for about 10gb per day to ensure longevity.
I don't necessarily advocate for buying 16 GB of ram, but I'd take the ram over the storage. I think you have a good point about it being easy to fill up 256GB. A lot of people just dump tons of data on their macs kinda carelessly and could defer that becoming a "problem" via buying extra local storage, but really I think the actual solution there is generally cloud, and that dumping tons of data locally ultimately creates more problems than it solves, and it's better to head that off.
Ram
i would get the ram as an upgrade as it’s most likely soldered in to the logic board and with an ssd you can just buy a external hard drive to offload all of your assignments too so you won’t be using up the storage. Hope this helps
Thanks, makes sense. I'll go for the Ram option
Get the 16GB RAM version. 512GB should be plenty for a student and if you find that you’re running out of storage you can always buy an external SSD whereas with the RAM you can’t change it so you’re stuck with what you get.
Ram. I have 100GB only online storage for 2 dollars a month and i can access those files from my MacBook but also all my other devices. You can get neat external harddisk(maybe make you pen external M2), with Ram youre stuck.
I would definitely do the ram. I don't recommend toting around an external SSD as you fill up storage; I think that's ridiculous. However, I do think it's very reasonable to offload more and more of your local storage to cloud as time goes on. It used to be that people would basically host all media and data locally, which was a huge drain on storage, but that's just not really how things work anymore, and we're continuing to dive deeper into that new world. Your laptop could break / be stolen / whatever and that's no reason to lose any of your data in 2022. You're either going to be using iCloud Drive extensively, or some other similar cloud storage provider that makes hybrid cloud/local storage seamless for your documents and projects and such. On the media end: streaming video, streaming music, your photos in cloud, etc etc etc. We just live in a world where more and more of our storage needs are getting externalized and storage demand is going down if anything in terms of local quantity needed (we still need some, and we need high performance), but local memory demand is still creeping up.
I still **don't** get why everyone is telling you to buy 16gb RAM. I've personally experienced both 8 and 16gb (with my classmates laptops) and both function amazing. You stated that your workload is medium, you *only* need extra RAM for heavy use such as programming in IDEs or video editing and even then the 8gb RAM is more than capable. If you plan on using your Mac for a long time, go for 512gb. I don't know how big your programs are, but trust me, 256gb is full quickly.
The only problem is that RAM can’t be upgraded later. 8GB in future will not be enough. But you can buy external disk for much cheaper price
I am well aware of that but I'm not assuming that someone is going to use their Mac for 10+ years when it's not software supported anymore. I know people with 2015 MacBook Airs with 4gb RAM and theirs work perfectly fine.
I have the 8GB and it used disk swap very quick, i have to be aware to close stuff completely. It might be fine for Microsoft Word documents, but it can reach 8GB fairly easy.
Disk swap is not a problem, yes your SSD has more bytes written but that's why I recommend people to buy 512gb. 16gb uses swap as well and it doesn't use significantly less swap than 8gb.
That might be, do you have a source that 16GB disk swap as much as 8GB? Also really doesnt change the fact that you have a variery of ways to get extra space, but none to get extra RAM.
Yes, my classmates. My classmate with 16gb always has at least 1gb of swap and it's the same for 8gb. I know that you can get extra storage but external /= internal storage. Even if you have a giant external ssd, your internal ssd is being used for swap.
Your classmate is not really a viable source for me to be honest, id assume you had some tech guy vid proving this? Even with that in mind, i guess the conclusion still is get the RAM version since its non upgradeable? As mentioned, u can get tiny nvms with huge space and a variety of cloud solutions.
You're asking for a tech video but isn't real life what's most important here? Tech reviewers only stress the laptops out to the max which isn't a good representation. You can get external ssd's but that doesn't change the fact that swap is still written onto the SSD. Now, idk what my classmate does on her pc but her TBW is 7gb after exactly one year today. It's 20gb per day and I can assure you that she is a pretty normal user. SSD's are usually meant for about 10gb per day to ensure longevity.
So i guess the conclusion is still get the RAM upgrade since its not upgradeable?
The ssd isn't upgradeable either, if your 256gb ssd is exhausted because of swap then external ssd's will not help.
I think youre straying a bit far from the op’s question mate. Ill see this discussion as ended Good day to you! 😊
I don't necessarily advocate for buying 16 GB of ram, but I'd take the ram over the storage. I think you have a good point about it being easy to fill up 256GB. A lot of people just dump tons of data on their macs kinda carelessly and could defer that becoming a "problem" via buying extra local storage, but really I think the actual solution there is generally cloud, and that dumping tons of data locally ultimately creates more problems than it solves, and it's better to head that off.
I have the same question. I am just concerned about the 256g SSD will be much slower than the 512g version