24 Hours with MBA

After drooling over these things since they were released, deciding to buy one a couple of weeks ago, havering for ages about whether there might be an update soon, yesterday I just went out and bought a 1.6Ghz 80Gb model.

In short: I am chuffed as nuts!

It is a second machine to my MBP, which will remain my 'workhorse' for photo editing (I do a lot of batch editing of RAW files in Aperture and Photoshop), and my main computer for file storage, music collection, etc.

Here are my first impressions:

Intended use:

I got the MBA because I wanted something more portable, both around the house and for trips around town / away so I can keep in touch with internet stuff and email. However, I have installed Aperture and photoshop so I can at least import photos. I don't expect it to cut-it at heavy editing, but at the very least I can import and tag projects in 'quick preview' mode for later editing on my MBP, and anything beyond that is a bonus.

Installation and set up

I didn’t bother trying to migrate anything from my MBP. I installed my apps from scratch and set up system preferences as I like it pretty quickly. I have installed the following apps and still have 50Gb free:

Adium
Adobe DNG converter
Photoshop (I deleted Bridge and all the parts I don’t use)
Aperture 2.1
CandyBar
Firefox
iStumbler
iWork
LabTick
Onyx
Quicksilver
Skype

Installation of all that was a breeze. Mostly downloaded from internet. For Aperture and Photoshop I used ‘remote disk’ from my MBP - after some background reading it went seamlessly and was surprisingly quick.

Use so far

I haven’t tried any photo editing yet (as I say, I don’t mind if it can’t cope with this, provided I can import and tag images, anything else is a bonus). So far it has only been installing all my gear, customizing and browsing in multiple windows. Indeed when watching streaming video the fans do start to blow a lot, but the CPU does not appear to be limited to 50% as some claim - it has still been using both cores and full CPU when doing heavier tasks (e.g. photoshop installation and remote disk). When returning to lighter browsing and document editing the fans turn off again.

For me I am more than happy with that, but it is not my main computer and no way would I want it to be because there are times when I do extensive multitasking and processing.

But it is fantastically light and portable, stylish and so far I am extremely happy.

Bonuses

I was dubious about how well screen sharing and file sharing would work with my MBP, particularly after some very slow transfer rates when previously testing Airdisk with my MBP and an external harddrive. In fact I have been very pleasantly surprised how well it works (again, I had to do some background reading of Apple docs to get things set up properly, particularly my third-party router, but it didn’t take long to set up).

Screen sharing is FANTASTIC! I am typing this on my MBA while remote-controlling my MBP to (i) import and process some RAW files into Aperture and (ii) play iTunes into my HiFi. Meanwhile the MBA is only idling and I am chilling on the sofa.

I haven’t tried accessing my MBP from further away yet over internet, so will see how that goes.



All in all I am so far absolutely delighted! If / when an update comes I may or may not sell and go for the next one... I will see how it goes. Having everything I need installed and still have 50gb of space is fine for me... I can put on e.g. 30Gb of music for listening on the road, the remaining 20Gb I will keep for temporary RAW storage and emergencies. Quite fine for me

For sure it is a lot of money for what I would only use as a secondary computer, but I am very happy.

@ Mark, sure here you go http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3134/2792259377_6472c938d5_o.jpg

The unbordered part of the image is 16x9; ideal for wallpaper. The image was shot near Hanko in Southern Finland.

For the heating issue; I watch youtube maybe 5 minutes a week, normally just if I am chilling with my girlfriend and we can't remember how a song goes...so I don't think it will be an issue for me. Saying that I had streaming content on for over an hour yesterday morning and the fans were blowing but no problems with the CPU.

Anyway, I would say it sucks that a 1700Eur laptop can't handle video 100% well, but I have been reading about it for months before making the decision to get one so knew what to expect. I still think it is a great product.

Cheers.