Going from a 2009 27" iMac to a 2011 Macbook Air

[JasonR]

Ok...long story short. I sold my 2009 iMac 27" 2.66 Ghz Quad Core, 12 GB Ram blah blah blah because I just didn't use it much any more. I used the money to buy a 27" ACD and an iPad 3. Anyways, I now sync my iPhone and iPad with my Air, and when it syncs them it seems like it really takes up a lot of the CPU and slows it down a bit. Is this normal?

I also do a lot of work in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. I've worked in both on the Macbook Air on its built-in display, but will I see slowdown the 27" ACD?

I'm beginning to think I made the wrong decision regarding selling my iMac...

Edited to add: My Macbook Air is the 1.7 Ghz i5, 4GB Ram, 256GB SSD model...

 

[The-Pro]

I used the money to buy a 27" ACD and an iPad 3.

I also do a lot of work in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. I've worked in both on the Macbook Air on its built-in display, but will I see slowdown the 27" ACD?

Emm, since you have a macbook air and a ACD, why don't you just try it out to see if slows down. Wouldnt that be quicker than waiting for a response here. Plus then you know if it will slow down with what you do on it. Here, some posters might say yes it does slow down and others say no it wont.

On another note, I dont think you will notice slowdown due to the graphics card, it more likely you MBA will slowdown because of the 4GB RAM. That can be too little for photoshop and illustrator work.

 

[francis21]

Probably you might see a slowdown because the MBA will try to supply some of its power so that you can view it on your ACD, and running those intensive applications as well.

I'm guessing that if you will be continuing using these kinds of applications, a Macbook Pro is the way to go, which gives you both power and portability (but obviously, not the same portability as a MacBook Air).

But the bottom line is that the MBA will still be able to power up a display with the contents on its screen while running your applications fairly well. You might also notice that the fan will start to kick in for awhile.