Considering MBA with wireless HD

[chainprayer]

So I'm considering trading in my old MacBook for a MacBook Air. I have a huge photo and music collection, so I was thinking of pairings purchase with a Wifi enabled external hard drive. I don't use my music or photos on the go, so I thought this would be a good option.

Does anyone else have a similar setup? I'm concerned about any unforeseen issues.

Also, if I keep all my libraries off the MBA, how much free space should I expect to have on the 64gb model!

Thanks! I'm trying to see if the MBA is right for me.

 

[NutsNGum]

Also, if I keep all my libraries off the MBA, how much free space should I expect to have on the 64gb model!

Roughly 59GB minus however large your libraries are.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

I use a hard drive connected to an AirPort Extreme base station to hold my iPhoto library. I tried to use it for iTunes, but iTunes became unresponsive often. I think my iTunes Library file (the actual 'database', not the content,) was so big that random accesses were nasty over the higher-latency of WiFi compared to locally-connected. And playback of HD videos were often stuttery, which is strange, since I can watch them just fine over iTunes Home Sharing. Obviously iTunes must do buffering for what it knows is "remote", but assumes that a file it considers "local" is always available at zero latency.

 

[Killerbob]

I absolutely agree with Anonymous Freak.

I have my iPhoto, iTunes, and Aperture libraries on my NAS (ReadyNAS Pro 6), which is connected to my Time Capsule, and accessed via Ethernet from my Mac Pro, and via WiFi from my MacBook Pro and Air.

To use these libraries properly, I have to do any updates, and even syncing iPhones/Ipads from my Mac Pro, as otherwise it is too slow and unresponsive. I can open up the libraries from the MacBooks, but only for playing music or seeing pictures. Not for any editing/updates.

I know it is not the disk system, as the ReadyNAS is amongst the fastest prosumer NAS systems available. Hence it is a WiFi issue, and as Anonymous Freak says, it is the high latency issue which is affecting these library accesses.

Bo