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Thanks for the advice.

> for the i7, I'd say don't go there if you are not involved with complex rendering or serious multitasking

I'll be doing some software development locally on my machine. It'll mostly be small personal projects. I just thought maybe I'd benefit from the small boost that comes from the i7. According to Anandtech, the i7 makes things about 25% faster (according to various benchmarks).

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It really matters most what those "things" that are 25% faster are. I don't have Mountain Lion, but if it's a general speed up on the entire system I'd say it might be worth it.

Maybe go to a store and try a demo? Might make it more obvious what, if any, difference the upgrade will make for non-resource intensive tasks.

I haven't read the benchmarks... But go for mhz rather than cores. (Amdahl's Law)

The only differences, based on ARK Intel between the MacBook Air i5 and i7 are:

Speed: i5 @ 1.3 GHz vs. i7 @ 1.7 GHz

Cache: 3MB on the i5 vs. 4MB on the i7

So yes, the clock speed is higher -- but I'd assume that much of the increased performance comes from reduced cache misses due to the larger cache size... (correct me if I'm wrong).

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