Apple - MacBook Air 15" Laptop - M2 chip - 8GB Memory - 256GB SSD (Latest Model) - Silver OPEN BOX Excellent - $842.99

I bought one. Thoughts on this deal?

Go to open box section on Silver 15 Air M2 (8/256)
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/appl...Id=6534603

Seems like a great deal! it's essentially the sale price (of new) + open box discount stacked

Pretty good deal if the MacBook Air actually is in good condition. I had one since June and absolutely loved it! Although sadly the RAM in the base model turned out not to be enough for my mid-level needs. And so I went to reorder a specced up model and ultimately decided to replace it with a 14" MacBook Pro for a few hundred more.

However, if your main uses are web browsing and email and watching movies on a nice large screen, the base 15" MacBook Air should be more than enough for many users. It's a sweet portable machine and my wife is now the one enjoying it haha. It feels like a far more powerful version of the 15" MacBook Pro that is crazy thin and light for its size too. It's nice for those who need the bigger screen to have a far less expensive option than the 16" beast too. Enjoy it!

Nothing available to ship to NYC

What were your mid level needs? The other Air I have is 16GB. I thought this might work as a road machine spare?

Well, running Windows 11 ARM under Parallels mainly and then also my typical tab usage in Safari. Those two things were quite rough. Just Safari alone would be forcing the laptop to use swap occasionally, but running Parallels (and nothing else), even limiting Window's access to RAM heavily, was causing slowdowns and excessive swap memory usage for me. Those are the big ones. But then I just had to get an Apple Studio Display (It was $800 on the FB Marketplace and I couldn't stay no lol) and I found that the Studio Display was also hogging some additional resources when using the Air docked, causing me to hit swap memory that much more when used at my desk (which is 90% of my at-home computer usage).

Many family and friends I know don't multitask very heavily and typically are just on a computer to browse, read emails and watch streaming media and don't push their computers far beyond that. I definitely could have gotten by, but I figured I might as well go for the more powerful machine while I can (I work on cargo ships, so will be overseas for six months soon) as Apple products are stupidly expensive overseas haha. That, plus I was able to take advantage of the Edu discount and $150 Apple Gift Card promo (again) on the new base model 14" MacBook Pro. The gift card is nice as I turn around and use it afterward to pay for annual AppleCare+ on both our MacBooks.

If the base 15" Air were specced 16GB/512GB I'm pretty sure I would've kept it as I really enjoyed the form factor, but alas the jump to the MBP for a wee more, beyond a BTO 15" Air, was a better fit for me after all. I hear rumor the M3 MacBook Airs will likely come equipped with 12GB RAM standard (and honestly I can live with the 256GB at this point) so maybe I'll go with a big-screen Air next time around.

I see. I have never tried parallels. At my office I am, mostly Windows although it's my company. The main app I still use on windows is Quickbooks desktop pc. I have never used parallels. I usually remote to my office using crhome remote desktop if I need to run anything on the windows machine when out of town. That works pretty good actually. I can live with 256 these days as well with dropbox and such. Apple is a real PIA once you get past base configs. Otherwise they are price competitive to most decent quality windows laptopos. It's easy to resell them and upgrade as needed.

That's the thing, the upgrades are quite expensive... I would say it can be worth it to upgrade if you plan to keep your iPhone, iPad, MacBook, etc. for a long long time... But if you are a compulsive upgrader (like myself haha) then you will take a nice bath over the premium paid beyond the base model. This too was another factor that influenced my decision to buy the base 14" Pro model as it has a better re-sale/trade-in to purchase price ratio by and large.

Parallels works quite nicely, given that BootCamp is no longer a thing, as I do need some Windows capabilities at work (and we certainly cannot remote-in to anything out to sea haha), I could just as easily buy a cheap PC laptop, but its nice to not have to carry the extra gear over there, I have Windows 11 available as needed and it plays nicely inside MacOS allowing me to share printers, storage devices and files quite seamlessly. If you prefer, you can also put Windows programs in your LaunchPad or on the Dock and when you click on them it launches Paralells VM automatically. Heck, the M2 has enough nuts you can even play some PC games inside the VM (on the MacBook Pro anyways lol) if you were so inclined.

And not only all of that, she makes a great little desktop computer (That I don't have to sync with a separate laptop) w/ the Studio Display I found. Quite happy with it!