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.
Because of my job, I get to play with a lot of different technology. ; When the first Airs came out, I bought 2 of them for the office. ; I didn't like the machine that much - the new wore off of it pretty quickly and I handed it down to someone else. ; The other fellow that got an Air had a different opinion. ; He really liked it and it ran like a champ until he ran over it with his Civic. ; Actually, it still ran after that, but it was ugly. ; Right now, I've got a 15" i7 MacBook Pro and a new 11" MacBook Air signed out to me. ; I really like the Air. It's a significant upgrade over the old model and I find myself using it all the time. ; It seems much more solid than the first model. ; I do miss having a built in ethernet port though. ; That bit me on a trip once with the original Air when I showed up at a place that had no wifi (Hmmm... was that the Boardwalk years ago?) For photo editing work though, the 11" is just too small *for me*. ; To be honest, a 13" screen is too small for me as well. ; I had a MacBook Pro 13 for awhile and I gave it up for the 15" because of the screen size. ; That's not to say it won't work for anyone else though. ; My eyes just aren't what they used to be and I have a hard time dealing with small screens. Gary, how are you liking the battery life? ; My Air seems to run forever on a charge.
Great stuff Gary, love that you have plunged into the Apple camp. ; New MacBook Pros announced this week sound pretty good as well with Thunderbolt! ; Makes my PowerBook G4 look ancient, which it really is. ; Although I find it hard going back to lugging around a laptop when my iPad fits my needs on the road.
it's hard to tell yet on battery life, i ran it down to reserve the 2nd day i had it, but that was with it on for hours and a lot of constant surfing and downloading/installing. and also powering a little travel mouse, and the hp optical drive to load ps and nik, and then the 500gb ego for hours. but i think it'll be promising, and as more and more airport lounges and airline seats acuire power outlets i'll be able to save battery for occasional use. i know our o'hare/vancouver leg on united shows us on an A319, per seat guru none of united's have seat power. but it's only 4 1/2 hours, so coming back i should be able to do some work on the alaskan cruise photos , or at least until i run out of battery, and if that's most of the flight length, well that's just fine with me SCREEN, here i did have to think a little, but i just got new glasses, and this year i got my reading glasses cut for computer distance, i see an improvement over my old reading glasses, so i can edit on 13 inch. and i can always give photo sets the once over before public release, i will be plugging the portable drives right into my home mac to download backups anyway. Weight and size, as some of you know, i have a loaded 15" mac pro , this hooked to a 24" apple cinema serves now as my home base, size really was a limit, i wanted to take that smaller bag, for several reasons, i tend to travel with too much gear, i guess if i have a big bag i have to fill it, then i always get home with some lens that i didn't use, or only used for a few shots, i tell myself not to do this, but i have a hard time when it comes to the packing. plus i really need to move mentally into the M4/3 system being my travel rig for non disney vacations. we are doing a river cruise out of amsterdam next year, and i really want to be settled into that system, and travel lighter than ever. the weight has become more troubling as i grow a little older and a little more arthritic in the morning. since i don't have any business related computer needs, i don't need ethernet connections, if i'm off the air for a few days, so be it, both the hotel we are using in victoria bc, and the fairmont pacific rim, in vancouver itself have free wifi, in victoria , harbour towers it's in the room, at the pacific rim, it's in some lounge areas, which is fine with me, if i have anything prepped i could upload to my site pre cruise,while sipping my am coffee, the rest waits until i'm home. i wasn't sure if an ipad would have fit my needs on the road, can it run all my stuff as listed above, can cards load into it?, i find it a nice plus that there is an sd reader built right into the air, sdhc is what the panasonic uses, so that right there saves the weight of a reader.
