gary
Member
so i've been up and running for 2 days now, this is a great product, pricey, but what apple product isn't. apple just seems to get it as far as the intersection of form and function go. i considered the iphone a disaster, i never had one, but that was a service issue more than anything, especially in my area, since at&t was overwhelmed with new phones, and was very reluctant to spend what was necessary to add towers. so i'll cover a few things, but this is in no way an unbiased review, i have left the dark side and have now fully come into the light of apple products.
as some of you know, i have an HP netbook, i was given a $200 credit last year by verizon, spendable only at the HP store, for getting a dsl line, and rolling all my communication costs into one bill. so i threw a few bucks of my own into the deal, and got a ramped up netbook. it does ok, can run lightroom, not PS, pretty slow, and had some strange quirks of it's own when trying to export to my phanfare hosted site, although i did figure out a workaround. but i was never quite as happy as i thought i could be, as an aside, windows 7 home premium, appears to be what vista should have been, had they done proper r&d before release.
so i went back and forth for a few days between a 13" macbook pro and the air. i knew that if went with the air, i would commit to the top of the line available, so i optioned up the pro until the price was roughly equivalent. i ended up with the air for several reasons
the pro as specced would have been about 2x as heavy, almost 2x as thick, and would have created more heat, and when it's on your lap in an airport lounge, killing 3 hours until your flight, that's a consideration
comparisons for the money
air, 4gb ram, not expandable, pro, filled up, 8 gb ram
air, 256gb flash drive, not expandable, pro, 500gb hard drive
air, 2.13 ghz, the pro i could have gotten the next speed up
air, no optical drive, not an issue, already had a small usb HP, and i don't travel with one, pro has one built in
both have the same OS, the same wireless set up
i am locked into the 13" size for a couple of reasons, both of my modest size camera bags are only capable of that size as max, and as i become more and more sold on micro 4/3 as a legitimate travel camera system, i need less bag, so i don't have to cart around the full size backpack that can handle up to a 17" size
i sit here typing this on the airbook, it grabbed my wireless setup right away, recognizes my net stora raid, and as of right now i have LR3, PS cs4, phanfare, the full topaz bundle, the full nik suite, and a whole bunch of Lr and PS plugins, and LR presets from the net, and i still have 232 gb of drive space left. and since i already had an iomega ego 500gb portable drive configured for mac, i have a place to put photos during vacation during the nightly download, and at 13" the screen is large enough to do some airport/plane seat editing, real editing, not just cull the junk
this thing is pretty fast from the flash drive, pretty decent from the external, so for what i need in a travel setup, this'll do quite nicely. with the power cord, em power cord for plane seat power, iomega drive, belkin travel mouse, and 4 port usb hub, i don't have more than 4 lbs of travel wt. this thing is just plain good to me. and as an aside, the wt of an additional external iomega adds 1/2 lb, and costs about $100 tax and shipped, right now from b&h. giving me an answer to my paranoia about the vacation photos on 1 drive, for the cost of 2 more 32gb cards, i can just do 2 separate downloads to the drives, and if 1 should fail before getting home, i still have a copy, no more purchasing cards constantly as price drops, and only have to carry a couple cards per trip, so wt is about the same as 2 wallets full of cards.
the netbook? that's going to vermont to live, i can hit the neighbors router as he shared his password with me, so i can read email and surf tmip.
as some of you know, i have an HP netbook, i was given a $200 credit last year by verizon, spendable only at the HP store, for getting a dsl line, and rolling all my communication costs into one bill. so i threw a few bucks of my own into the deal, and got a ramped up netbook. it does ok, can run lightroom, not PS, pretty slow, and had some strange quirks of it's own when trying to export to my phanfare hosted site, although i did figure out a workaround. but i was never quite as happy as i thought i could be, as an aside, windows 7 home premium, appears to be what vista should have been, had they done proper r&d before release.
so i went back and forth for a few days between a 13" macbook pro and the air. i knew that if went with the air, i would commit to the top of the line available, so i optioned up the pro until the price was roughly equivalent. i ended up with the air for several reasons
the pro as specced would have been about 2x as heavy, almost 2x as thick, and would have created more heat, and when it's on your lap in an airport lounge, killing 3 hours until your flight, that's a consideration
comparisons for the money
air, 4gb ram, not expandable, pro, filled up, 8 gb ram
air, 256gb flash drive, not expandable, pro, 500gb hard drive
air, 2.13 ghz, the pro i could have gotten the next speed up
air, no optical drive, not an issue, already had a small usb HP, and i don't travel with one, pro has one built in
both have the same OS, the same wireless set up
i am locked into the 13" size for a couple of reasons, both of my modest size camera bags are only capable of that size as max, and as i become more and more sold on micro 4/3 as a legitimate travel camera system, i need less bag, so i don't have to cart around the full size backpack that can handle up to a 17" size
i sit here typing this on the airbook, it grabbed my wireless setup right away, recognizes my net stora raid, and as of right now i have LR3, PS cs4, phanfare, the full topaz bundle, the full nik suite, and a whole bunch of Lr and PS plugins, and LR presets from the net, and i still have 232 gb of drive space left. and since i already had an iomega ego 500gb portable drive configured for mac, i have a place to put photos during vacation during the nightly download, and at 13" the screen is large enough to do some airport/plane seat editing, real editing, not just cull the junk
this thing is pretty fast from the flash drive, pretty decent from the external, so for what i need in a travel setup, this'll do quite nicely. with the power cord, em power cord for plane seat power, iomega drive, belkin travel mouse, and 4 port usb hub, i don't have more than 4 lbs of travel wt. this thing is just plain good to me. and as an aside, the wt of an additional external iomega adds 1/2 lb, and costs about $100 tax and shipped, right now from b&h. giving me an answer to my paranoia about the vacation photos on 1 drive, for the cost of 2 more 32gb cards, i can just do 2 separate downloads to the drives, and if 1 should fail before getting home, i still have a copy, no more purchasing cards constantly as price drops, and only have to carry a couple cards per trip, so wt is about the same as 2 wallets full of cards.
the netbook? that's going to vermont to live, i can hit the neighbors router as he shared his password with me, so i can read email and surf tmip.