I have been holding off buying the MacBook Air until this week’s announcement.
Should be an excellent travel laptop. I’ll use an SD card in the card slot, and can use it tethered if desired. This will fill in for a storage device in the field. Just wish my iMac had the thunderbolt connection. Yes, David, I too wish it had USB 3.0
Anyone been using an Air?JackJack, good luck with your Air! With the solid state drive, that should have really impressive input/output performance. And I hope its other attributes will suit you well.
I’m considering a MacBook Pro to replace my little 12″ G4 PowerBook, which is convenient for travel, and that’s about all I use it for. Doesn’t have the horsepower to run any current RAW processing software. But I would like to be able to better see the “take” while afield…
Jack take a look here. You should be pretty good prepared with a new air.
I’m impressed that Apple put i7 processors in the new MacBook Air.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiJack MacD;352 wrote: What’s the advantage of the i7 vs i5 David?
Jack,
The biggest difference is that the i7 has hyperthreading while the i5 does not. So, while the speed is essentially the same clock-for-clock, the i7 will have twice the virtual cores, making it superior for heavily multi-threaded applications like image editing.
I’d go the i7.
David
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiAre you looking at the 11″ or 13″ MBA?
I was just in the Apple Store and looked at both. If I was in the market for one ;), I’m actually not sure which way I’d go.
The 11″ is barely bigger than my gen 1 iPad and much more functional, but has a pretty small screen. The 13″ has decent screen real estate and might be a capable Portable LR system, but is approaching the size of a “real” laptop with less power.
I like both, but for different reasons. Then I wonder if I’d have much use for an iPad with one of these, especially the 11″.
Anyone else have any thoughts?
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiThey are very, very tempting, but since I am looking at the S2, I decided to just get an SSD for my older Macbook pro. Hopefully that will give it another year or two. I also love the size and portability of the Macbook Air, but I would really miss the things you lose in going with that form factor (or what you seem to lose each time the MBP is upgraded!), for example, the optical digital output in the headphone jack (great for hooking up to a DAC for good audio or for playing movies from the computer), Firewire 800 (I guess you can eventually get an adapter for the thunderbolt port), and a simple ethernet connector. Those are all things I have used in the last week (except for ethernet cable, which I used a few weeks ago), so I know that adjusting to the fewer ports would be a bit annoying. Also, one USB is not that generous…if you are using a USB 3g device, for example, you can’t plug anything else in…
I am sure there are work-arounds for most all of these, and I keep wanting a smaller computer for my general use, but then when the reality of the downsizing hits, I realize I am probably better off sticking with the 15″ MBP.Stuart,
Your SSD solution sounds smart.
In my case I have an iMac for studio, and the Air will be for the road.
I thought I could avoid a laptop on the road, but on every photo trip I missed it, and my old MacBook Pro is heavy, slow, maxed at 3Gig, battery that lasts 5 minutes, etc. I have given it a new battery, new hard drive, more Ram, but time marches on, and the Air will do the trick, now that it is fast and not as expensive as when it first came out. If you want just one computer and you need a laptop for portability, the Mac Book Pro with quad and SSD is very nice, or a powerful PC is probably smarter for an S2 user than just an Air.
Transferring LR files from the Air to my iMac using USB2 will be an overnight effort at the end of a photo trip. Too bad my iMac is last year’s and has no thunderbolt connection. Yes I could buy the new thunderbolt display that gives me firewire800 transfer rates, but I will wait for an external hard drive that takes both firewire 800 and thunderbolt or eventually a thunderbolt adaptor to firewire800. This Air will also replace my iPad with never worked for viewing Raw and was not a file backup for the field. Plus I hate typing on the iPad. The SSD speed will make up for the limit of 4Gig RAM I hope. David, I have a 13″ with i7 on order, thanks for your advice. The i7 costs an extra 6% for a minimum 10% improvement, and any of the machines are being reported as twice as fast as those of just 8 months ago. I’ll let you know what I think when it arrives.
JackJackAir in use:
So far very satisfied.
1.Tethering with LR3 is very nifty and fast.
Might be the best way to download images to the computer, skipping the SD slot, or CF external reader, until a CF thunderbolt reader is available. Any concerns?2. For moving LR files/catalogs from the Air back to my iMac, I am using a 16 gig SD card for storage transfer to the iMac. Slow but sure. Perhaps will buy a 32gig card for the purpose?
3. Lion makes the Air and a smaller screen much more useable. One has to try it to see.
I would now strongly suggest a 11″ is plenty good enough if you are wanting smaller and cheaper than 13″Photo is as if the S2 has live view, it doesn’t. Moire pattern pretty strong here, but not an issue.
Jack
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