Lowest price for the MBA base model. Prices increased due to AUD and inflation compared to the last few years, unfortunately.
Still a good price.
First time poster so come at me.
Apple MacBook Air 13.6" Laptop: M2 Chip 8-Core CPU, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD $1698 + Delivery ($0 to Metro Areas/ C&C) @ Officeworks
860
Leyepeefreely on 08/01/2023 - 11:12 officeworks.com.au (3719 clicks)
Last edited 08/01/2023 - 11:18 by 1 other user
Last edited 08/01/2023 - 11:18 by 1 other user
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Seems to be available for CC at a few shops in Melbourne. Russel Street said available within 2 hours. Possibly they have stock
Yeah, it definitely said available to CC.
This was their auto email response:
"Unfortunately, we have had to cancel and refund your order as it did not meet our customer privacy and security standards when shopping with Officeworks".That doesn't make any sense. How does ordering a Macbook Air not meet their customer privacy and security standards. That's shoddy as.
@dm02: Yeah. A person might be better off going in store to buy it over the counter. The payment through the EFTPOS terminal might actually work right and the staff can verify it. It should scan at the same price in store that it says online.
@dm02: by allowing the order to submit Officeworks already took the data for privacy and security purposes š¤¦
Apple products advertising as privacy/security šš?
š¤·
You prob just got flagged by their transaction fraud flagging software. Those use a ton of different bs that all goes into a big machine learning blob and it goes yay or nah so itās hard to say why they think itās suss and also they donāt want you to be able to figure out how to work around it, so they just give you a generic message.
Try a diff card or ip address or something (though common vpns can make it more likely for this type of software to trigger a warning)
Ya this happened to my previous macbook pro online order. They took the money from my cerdit card and got the same message. I called up office works and they said the order was rejected by automated system, because the order was flagged as security risk (even after taking the money from my credit card). You would assume at this and day age, they would have sorted out such a simple thing as ordering online.
I recalled years ago i wrote a review for a tablet and wished it had 4G but OW did not have that model. They refused to publish my review that the tablet would have been full score had it come in 4G, get this, ow responded to my review that 'on the basis that your review did not meet officeworks standards of professional reviews and is likely to offend other customers.' Looks like this person is promoted to fulfil orders. Now he's blaming privacy for not being able to fulfill an order. I have to give OW for coming up with the most ridiculous unheard-of reasons when they have a service failure
You really have to wonder what sort of people OW pay to carry their brand.
Where is Appleās back to school offer this year? Should be out by now
What was the deal last time?
I think it was free Airpods. Pretty lame if you ask me.
Yeah, underwhelming but ok if u can flip them somewhere.
This time is should be Apple Gift Cards if it is the same as all the northern hemisphere back to school sales.
i bet you arent even going back to school
How do I get the education discount? I donāt have an edu email. Only an acceptance offer.
Same price for the Midnight colour on Amazon now
Ironically, my wife's macbook air (now 10yrs+ old) has been having issues this weekend.
I offered to wifey to buy this macbook for her but she says she'll just live with using the iPad Pro I got her last year despite Word and Excel being bastardised versions on iPad.
I might just get her a bluetooth mouse so she can use work and excel properly on the ipad - lol.
Sheās patient! I have an iPad Pro for work and it is not amazing for day to day work. Itās the kidsā games device now.
IKR! Anyone else would have jumped at the opportunity to get a new laptop to replace a 10yr+ one.
I couldn't deal with just using an iPad Pro for my workflow… but then hers is a lot of photo/video recording and basic video editing which the app she uses does quite well so a high end tablet makes sense for what she does.
Office applications is a distant second, though, I'm glad I've at least upgraded to using MS365 Family as I've needed two of the accounts just for her (she takes a lot of photos and videos on her phone and on her tablet that I need separate OneDrive accounts for each device… separating them keeps things orderly for her too). I've given two accounts to my parents so their phones can back up photos automatically too. I'm sure the last one will be used by wifey as soon as she fills up one of her OneDrive accounts - lol
Haha crazy how onedrive took the lead on online storage. Used to be Dropbox and google drive all day
@eyepeefreely: Yeah, I was a dropbox user for the longest of times. Then OneDrive offered 15Gb for free along with another 15Gb free if one turned on auto camera upload. 30Gb was enough for me for the longest of times but finally became too little when we got our pug and I started taking videos of the little guy. I initially upgraded to the 100Gb plan for $3/mth but when a Windows update last year gave me that 50% off MS365 Family, I finally bit the bullet and upgraded knowing that wifey would need to back up her phone's photos to the cloud.
Dropbox still sends me emails telling me that my 3Gb of free storage is full and I should consider upgrading to a higher plan.
@Mugsy: Haha same from Dropbox. They were the best for SO long until they lost it. Shame reallly. I think their desktop and web ui were always the best. They just priced themselves out of the market.
@eyepeefreely: OneDrive was a good deal because it came with 1TB per account with Office 365ā¦ but now that Iām nearly full on my main account, the lack of features to share/pool storage or cheap upgrades to 2TB (like most other providers which offer a 2TB tier now) means Iām going to have to choose another provider soon.
@jace88: Yeah, it seems that pricing starts becoming an issue after one exceeds 1TB… for OneDrive it's either:
- add on more storage for $X/mth
- start paying a higher price for a 1TB+ plan with another provider
- use a spare account if one has one free as part of MS365 Family
- start deleting stuff from online storage
It's been something I've been planning ahead for. My wife's phone has already uploaded 188Gb since we started backing up her photos/videos 6 months ago. Of course, a lot of that was photos/videos she took for the first 2yrs she had her phone but she takes a lot for her work and classes she teaches so I'm sure she will max her 1Tb in no time. Luckily, she's OK with me just moving her onto a fresh OneDrive account.
EDIT: I'm lucky that 1TB will last me a long time. I've only used 44Gb and don't have an issue with using one account across multiple devices. That reminds me… Dad bought a new secondary phone that I probably need to install OneDrive on and turn on camera back up.
@Mugsy: I used to feel that way wondering how anyone would max out 1TB… getting a DSLR, capturing videos, and having a couple of kids… that does the trick of filling it up. I really do just wish there was an easy solution on Microsoft's side to allow pooling of OneDrive allowances across family accounts so I don't need to resort to lame tricks like sharing folders from other accounts and putting stuff in there, etc. Currently I've taken the approach of just downloading some of the older/larger files and moving to my NAS, but I would prefer to keep things in OneDrive for the "safety" of Microsoft (vs likelihood of my NAS or offsite NAS backup dying on me or becoming corrupted).
@jace88: Yeah, the ability pool OneDrive allowances or to be able to allocate X GBs to different users would be amazing. For my folks, 1Tb is too much… my Dad could get by with 100Gb for the next 10yrs… my mum 10Gb would be sufficient because she doesn't take that many photos.
But my wife could do with 4Gb all to herself!
And I suppose DSLR use is a bit different these days compared to 15yrs ago. I remember going to Tanzania with my 8MP Canon 350D and 24Gb of CF cards and no means of backing up on the trip, and hoping they wouldn't get corrupted or stolen before I got all the photos off them upon returning a month later. Online storage was not an economical option. The much larger MP of today's cameras would mean 1Tb will be quickly used up.
Though, my last camera is a comparatively old Olympus E-M10 mk2 that I don't really use all too much now days since my wife complains about my photos being poorly framed (my fault for marrying an artist with an eye for composition). As such, she does the photo taking and I only take photos for productivity purposes.
You know it will be your fault when the iPad stops to serve the purpose and the old Mac wonāt boot.
Better safe than sorry!!Gift her one on a special day and save yourself the mental trauma :)
Except when she has a working iPad and Macbook, she'll want the latest $2k+ iPhone so it all works under the same ecosystem. It'll be my fault for putting her in that situation!
Plus she'll yell at me for spending $1700 on a Macbook without consulting her on the colour first (and there's no way of guessing what she wants here… believe me, I've tried on other tech stuff and there's no trend to what colour she wants).
Simply put, it's like trying to escape Dark City… there's no way out of this…
It is never worth figuring out the rules of a SWMBO.
Is it black screen with error message? I got that randomly today - had to do full wipe/reinstall using command option R on boot up.
is 8gb ram still ok these days?
If u have a time machine to 1998. Jokes, I have the M1 and itās absolutely enough for me.
No, not really.
if you are already spending 1500+ for a new laptop, 8GB ram is a bit sad.
it's sad if your phone has more ram than your laptop
Unless you know you need more for what youre going to be using it for, 8gb is fine
Rubbish, it's 2023. 8GB is over with. Even a fresh install of Windows with basic software, can lag up on a teams call and MS Word with 8GB.
Arm M1 whatever it is might help somehow, but really 8GB isn't leaving a lot of room.
16GB is a great figure, it'll last for a very very long time. 32GB? Excessive for end users, for sure. I'd agree some people over-recommend ram but 8?
Nah, just no. $400 jobs from Harvey Norman ship with 8.
Intel ram vs m1 ram is very different (on both a physical and architectural level). 8gb is definitely not great, on either, but where it's barely passable on Intel, info is its definitely very functional (if not great) on m1.
@incipient: I could totally believe ARM is better with less memory but there's limits. 8GB isn't much.
As soon as a poorly optomised piece of software hits it (teams, excel, adobe products) it's going to bring it to its knees.
This is a MacBook Air. It isnāt intended for workloads like a MacBook Pro 14 or 16 inch models.
That said, the Mx SOCs, close integration with very high speeds of the SSDs, and Mac OS all combine to deliver efficiency when it comes to RAM needs. I can understand concern from windows users, and I myself would probably buy a higher spec model (I want more storage for a start), but for most purchasers of an MBA it would never be noticed.
8GB is plenty for basic web browsering and some light office use and a teams / zoom call. However for multiple spreadsheets, 50+ chrome tabs and whatnot I would get the 16GB varient.
Fine for average tasks.
As others have said, depends on how resource-intensive the apps you want to use are, and how many you want to run at once. Until last year I was running a Mac with 4GB RAM, and never thought it was slow. For a regular user 8GB is enough, but anyone wanting to do video/photo editing would probably want to go higher.
For daily stuff and office work, as long as you don't have a tonne of things in the background it works fine. If you're doing photo editing with Lightroom classic, in particular, you want at least 16gb. My MBP14 with 16gb regularly hits ssd swap when I'm editing photos in LR
Just enough for Mac if it's not light usage. For windows, 8GB is a joke.
Bu..Buā¦buā¦ itās 8GB RAM!!!
Waiting for the angry morons to make an appearance in this thread lol
it will load OS and office and still have free memory on my intel macbook air ā¦.
what i find hogs memory is chrome as by default it keeps tabs open and each tab sucks up memory ā¦so after visiting 100 web sites itās a bit of a hog unless you close tabs ā¦..itās one of the reasons people, on android want more ram on their phones ā¦..lost of open apps and chrome tabs ā¦..iām an android users but also have apple devices ā¦..Serious question, who keeps 100+ tabs open on Chrome? Their is no way you know what is in each tab, wasting time trying to find which tab has what information, it would be quicker to just navigate to the website again.
itās les than 100 but it is in double digits with users ate work, yep, google defaults ā¦..causes us no end of problems at work with resource useage vs edgeā¦ā¦google defaults are for fast experience not efficient use of resources ā¦..
I know a bunch of people who do and everytime I tell them that's ridiculous and to close them down
Exactly right, can't find a thing and it's a pain to search (even with the new search box)
You can group tabs. Also, you can create multiple space(s) (kinda like virtual desktops).
If you use applications which do take up some RAM. If you then mix in with Word, Excel, Outlook and Powerpoint, you could run into a situation that virtual memory is being used a bit too much.
General use - 8GB RAM is enough
Tech savvy users wanting to squeeze max performance out of m2 - probably go for 16GB RAM (though, M1 Pro, M1 Max might be better alternative for that).
Is this base model has 8 cores Gpu and single channel SSD? 512gb ssd model is a better option.
Would this be sufficient to run Blender 3D? Seems to meet the minimum specs but not really familiar with Mac specs and OS's.
As a hobbiest or just to learn, yes. If you are making Hollywood movies, no lol.
Thanks. Would I be better off getting a windows desktop running an RTX 4070TI/4080 with a Ryzen 7 or i7 or this, if it's being used for a hobby on Blender? Trying to toss up between a MacBook and a desktop PC for this long term.
Itās hard to say.. If you are really serious about 3D art then yeah the desktop is better. But a laptop will get you a long long way. Actually doing it will matter more than the equipment if you are just starting out.
yes… a pc with a 4080 and ryzen 7 may be better than apples base laptop…
Both will do it fine, but obviously desktop will be faster. Question you have to ask yourself is whether you value portability over time saved.
@Trishool: FWIW, assuming you've decided you would prefer portability in the Macbook then It's worth acknowledging the base model M2 Macbook Air with 256gb of storage has some issues due to the SSD chip configuration. If you can, I'd suggest waiting for the 512GB to go on sale and springing for that. Just to be clear, the 256gb model is fine, but IIRC benchmarks in Youtube reviews showed that it was slower than the previous generation M1 Macbook Air at certain tasks as a result of the slower SSD speeds in the 256gb configuration (which is still faster than many other laptops).
@jace88: Point noted, than you for that! My son is going to a school next year where they use Mac's and will be required to purchase one, but it's also learning Blender and or current laptop isn't cutting it so I've promised to get him a better machine this year. Trying to figure out if I get him a MacBook or high end gaming PC based on it needs and pretentiousness use cases. Appreciate your input though, it's helping me make an informed decision.
@Trishool: If everyone else is using a Mac in school, I'd suggest following the same. If budget is a focus, realistically in most normal use cases, it won't make much difference and it just means it could be a few seconds faster at a few things… nothing which someone who is doing it for fun at school (vs a professional making money) would worry about IMO.
@jace88: Definately will end up getting a MacBook, however the decision is whether I get him a more high end one now that he can use for Blender and also take to school next year that will last him a while without me having to replace it, or buy a high end desktop PC this year that we both can use and also buy him a lower end MacBook next year specifically for school. Decisions š
@Trishool: If your choosing between M2 256 and M2 512, I don't think it'll make a material difference (for a student at least) in terms of blender performance. 2 more GPU cores and slightly faster SSDs (enabling better swap performance on the 8GB ram) will improve the day to day usability, but I would think that given the M2 Macbook Air was an entirely new design (and designs in Apple world tend to last a long time so at least you won't feel compelled to change each year) that the larger storage would probably prove to be more useful anyway.
Everytime I see new Macbook Airs/ultrabooks/etc with great battery and performance, I think back to my own time in highschool with archaic pen and paper, or even in uni with a cheap netbook (gah remember those?!) and how much better things are nowadays for students (granted, they aren't cheap though).
@eyepeefreely: I still canāt believe I tolerated not even having a dedicated function row and having to do finger gymnastics just to press alt f4. Damn you Dell mini 9. But at least you had inbuilt 3G so I didnāt have to pay crazy wifi prices per megabyte at unsw!
waiting for 14inch m2…
Waiting for 15.5" M3 Macbook Air with standard 16GB/512GB. I'll twiddle my thumbs while waiting, and waiting, and…
haha, i have been waiting for more than a year now, was expected to release in Dec last year, then pushed to March this year i believe
What cpu in windows Intel would this be equivalent to.
i5 / i7 ā¦ā¦the m chips are RISC based, very efficient , microsoft are dabbling in this stream with their ARM based ports but i think it will be apple vs intel for some time unless you have specialised applications like servers in DCs
As a point of technicality, the M chips are also arm based.
On geekbench it's roughly similar to i5-1240P.
Wish the 16GB / 512 would discount now and then! >:(
Nice, pity no deals for the 512gb version
I remember the days when a base model Macbook Air cost AUD$1049, which I then got on a clearance discount for $899 a year later (2014 if i remember correctly). Those were the days.
i think the challenge is āentry levelā so that schools can afford them ā¦. mu sons school has macbook pro M2 16gb 512GB or windows laptop as choices ā¦..the macbook is an extra $1000 ā¦. apple used to have entry level computers but they donāt seem to have developed a model as metro level for schools and the M2 air isnāt as cheap as windows options from dell or hp for schools.
According to apple, they do
Its called the ipad
I think they really "subsidized" the M1 Airs and Mac Minis to get people to jump onto apple silicon.. (So that developers could not ignore it). Pricing was super good for what it was.
the M1 was their first gen, now apple nolonger pay for intel IP , how long do they want to keep making M1 silicon.
with the school deal itās leased with insurance over 3 years ā¦.idea is fast replacements so students canāt complain not having compute for classes. dell and hp have things like plastic case so drops are absorbed by plastic rather than transferred to screen ā¦..apple are aluminium cases like my microsoft notebook , git a bump putting down backpack and cracked the glass touch digitiser ā¦. for schools you need cheap and kid proof ā¦..
I remember people suggest not to buy m2 256gb due to slow SSD speed? Better to get 512 or up?
āSlowā SSD speed
Thanks. Hereās a quote from it:
ā That said, will these particular differences impact you? People the Air is marketed to will likely not see a life-changing contrast between the 256GB and 512GB models when it comes to everyday performance. I ran two 4K YouTube videos over 25 open Chrome tabs for 30 minutes on both machines without either needing to dip into swap memory. Boot time was also pretty identical ā I turned the two devices on side by side a number of times. And I didnāt see much of a difference when it came to opening any of the apps I normally use, including Chrome, Safari, Messages, Photos, Activity Monitor, Slack, Music, etc.ā
@eyepeefreely: i donāt think storage i/o once on nvme is what slows things down , and people, make money running benchmarks and writing articles, from a user experienceā¦itās memory getting set up and ls running the app etc that also takes timeā¦ā¦on my PC move from pcie 3 to 4 storage has had no life changing difference.
@eyepeefreely: I think for normal app use the difference wonāt be noticeable since most operations have higher dependencies on ram than hard disk speed
What matters more are when you are saving / writing large files like those 4K ones
@eyepeefreely: My 10 year old i7 handles 25 chrome tabs easily, Id freakin hope new laptops can do much better š
No issue using apple gift cards at AOC?
more if you are union member, means you are working ā¦.can you salary sacrifice ?
Iām working but provided with a work laptop. I assume if purchasing via AOC it would be tricky to claim salary sacrifice unless a lecturer etc?
ive bought without being a union member
No issue. I bought my MacBook last year from aoc with gift cards discounted from Woolworths
Might get the cards from Coles with 10% of the value back as flybuys. If Apple have a back to school offer in next week or two will weigh up best option of AOC v Education portal.
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I tried to buy this yesterday (online click and collect) and they canceled my order & refunded me10 minutes later.
JBHIFI wouldn't price match it as OW had no stock. JB said they'd do it for $1750.
Let me know if you can buy it.