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Just Sold my i5 Macbook Air

Q

questioner76

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 27, 2011
72
9
I just sold my 13" Air on Craigslist for $200 less than I paid last July. Here's been my experience living without and I wanted to hear what others might have experienced.

I purchased the new iPad with LTE in March and found myself using my Air less and less. There were several weeks where I didn't even take it out of my bag. My use case for the Air was email, web surfing, working on PPT presentations, and editing documents in Word when I was on the road, which was every other week.

My employer now allows employees to access work email on iPads and iPhones, so I no longer need the Air to access work email. My iPad now gets all of my email via LTE or 3G, which my Air couldn't do and this saves me from having to find ethernet or a wifi spot when I need to type emails longer than I'm comfortable doing with the iPhone.

As for document editing, I can also use Citrix on the iPad, which allows me to edit documents in Word and use track changes in a virtual environment. It works great. I use the iPad keyboard/dock that came out with the iPad 1.

The real test will come on my next business trip, as I haven't tried a longer trip yet without a full fledged computer. I'm guessing the learning curve will be steep if I get into serious use situations. I'm also not sure how I will give slide presentations without a notebook video hookup.

We have an iMac at home, which is our primary computing device. I figured that with all the functionality I'm getting with the new iPad, combined with already having an iMac and the possibility that the new Macbook Pros might be a huge upgrade, now was a good time to sell while I could get a good price and try the iPad as a productivity tool experiment.
 
If you leave the country, you may have internet issues on the iPad and without internet you have no Office to use (Citrix). Same on the airplane. I don't think I could get by on something that has to be tethered to the internet to work - but that's just me.

You can get an HDMI adapter and maybe a VGA adapter for the iPad for presentations. But to avoid issues during the presentation, I would buy Keynote from Apple and download the PPT file to your iPad. Then run it using Keynote instead of PowerPoint (Citrix) so if there is an interruption in your internet, your presentation isn't taking a dive.

EDIT: This is the adapter you'll want to connect to VGA projectors:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC552ZM/B
 
My iPad is my favorite device. But to replace a computer with an iPad? No, I wouldn't want to do that. My iPad and Air work perfectly together, not one in place of the other.

For sure I don't want to rely only on a dumbed down computer for mobile use. Reason being my Air is better, faster, more versatile and full featured for doing work.

Some can do it, I wouldn't want to ... I whiz through my work on my Air so I can have some fun time enjoying entertainment on the iPad.

Some people see the iPad as a goal or target to reach so they can dump their laptops because it's easy, fun, has great battery life and so on, but in reality it's a step backwards with regards to limiting what you can actually do on a computer. Sure there's work arounds like carrying bags of accessories and keyboards but those add more weight than a MacBook Air would in a bag.

If it works for you great. I'm talking about the people hugging their iPads bragging how they dumped their laptops only to watch them sit down and take 30 minutes replying to an email that they could have done on a laptop in moments.

Also, it's easy to tether a laptop to an iPhone.
 
entatlrg said:
My iPad is my favorite device. But to replace a computer with an iPad? No, I wouldn't want to do that. My iPad and Air work perfectly together, not one in place of the other.

For sure I don't want to rely only on a dumbed down computer for mobile use. Reason being my Air is better, faster, more versatile and full featured for doing work.

Some can do it, I wouldn't want to ... I whiz through my work on my Air so I can have some fun time enjoying entertainment on the iPad.

Some people see the iPad as a goal or target to reach so they can dump their laptops because it's easy, fun, has great battery life and so on, but in reality it's a step backwards with regards to limiting what you can actually do on a computer. Sure there's work arounds like carrying bags of accessories and keyboards but those add more weight than a MacBook Air would in a bag.

If it works for you great. I'm talking about the people hugging their iPads bragging how they dumped their laptops only to watch them sit down and take 30 minutes replying to an email that they could have done on a laptop in moments.

Also, it's easy to tether a laptop to an iPhone.
Click to expand...

I think that's an exaggeration about the email thing, but I do agree with you that the iPad and the MBA serve two different functions. To me, the iPad is good at what it does, but it's mostly restricted to that. When the iPad is challenged with new ways to interface with things, then it is not able to do so. It's good at accessing information that you already frequently accessed.

Where the iPad lacks is its ability to access new and unknown information. There are a lot of file formats the iPad cannot deal with. The iPad struggles, to encode, convert, download new data. I can't even type correctly without looking at the screen because the keyboard is virtual.

This is the strength of a notebook. A full fledged computer is good at creating, and handling new information. It is good at exploring, generating, and finding new data.

I bring my iPad out and use it at home a lot as well, but I don't think I can give up my computer for it yet. I'm debating between the 15" MacBook pro or the 13" air right now since I have a laptop, but I'm thinking I'm going to end up wit the air since I feel like I'll need the mobility for accessing new informaetion on the go, in the future...
 
I had Ipad2, but it could not serve my office tasks. For portable Only viewing machine is OK, but if u want to create office documents - it lacks ! I have external kbd too !!!
 
Very good points, thanks. I have an airport express. I wonder if I can configure it using my ipad in hotels that only have ethernet.

bogatyr said:
If you leave the country, you may have internet issues on the iPad and without internet you have no Office to use (Citrix). Same on the airplane. I don't think I could get by on something that has to be tethered to the internet to work - but that's just me.

You can get an HDMI adapter and maybe a VGA adapter for the iPad for presentations. But to avoid issues during the presentation, I would buy Keynote from Apple and download the PPT file to your iPad. Then run it using Keynote instead of PowerPoint (Citrix) so if there is an interruption in your internet, your presentation isn't taking a dive.

EDIT: This is the adapter you'll want to connect to VGA projectors:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC552ZM/B
Click to expand...
 
If I had to choose between my iPad and MBA the latter would win every time!

APE is a great device for any laptop bag where you need to create a wireless network and used mine many times in Hotels that are still behind the times
 
questioner76 said:
Very good points, thanks. I have an airport express. I wonder if I can configure it using my ipad in hotels that only have ethernet.
Click to expand...

One other thing to note: While the iPad versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote work OK, they are missing a large amount of features from full products such as the OS X versions or Office versions.

I did drop my laptop for my iPad for a month last year. It can do a lot, but eventually I relied too much on other hardware via remoting that it became silly to not have a laptop. I used SSH and remote desktop over half of the time. The rest of the time I used email, Textastic (best text editors for the iPad, I highly recommend it), and the Pages/Numbers/Keynote suite.
 
Whatever works for you is all that matters. In my case, I just recently acquired an iPad, though I have been using a MacBook Air for 4 years. I used to travel with both my Windows notebook (work) and MacBook Air. Lately I've taken the iPad instead of the Air and it has worked out well. However, when I went on a recent trip I took the Air as a sole device, and would do so again. I have Windows 7 installed on the Air in Boot Camp and can access my network through Internet Explorer. Plus, the Air is quite a bit more powerful than the iPad.
 
I was in a very similar situation. I have an iMac at home, a MBA for work, and an iPad. I too started using the MBA less and less so I sold the MBA. I use splashtop with my iPad to connect to my iMac and it works perfectly for my needs. Don't miss my MBA at all and with my bt keyboard and splashtop I have all the functionality I need with fantastic battery life.
 
One of the cool features Android has in Honeycomb 3.1 is mouse support. I wish Apple had it for the iPad. When you hook up a keyboard, it is nice to have a scrolling mouse attached so you can turn the iPad into a semi laptop experience.

I still have a Galaxy Tab, which Irarely use, but one of the features I really liked was being able to use a mouse. It's pretty cool at times.
 
My iPad 3 LTE hasn't changed my mind about tablets. As good as it is, it is no replacement for my MBA. I do not like touch typing on the iPad and the thought of doing any work on it is frankly laughable. When I'm home I much prefer surfing the net and replying to e-mails on my MBA. I have a boat anchor of a Thinkpad that I use for work (MBA is my personal computer.) The iPad with LTE is an awesome device to travel with though. It's much easier to carry around than even a MBA and the Verizon LTE network is like having a fast broadband connection wherever I go. It makes all the down time when travelling seem much more tolerable.

If Apple allowed you to use a BT keyboard and mouse at the same time on the iPad you could actually use it as a laptop replacement.
 
Last edited:
Dunbar said:
If Apple allowed you to use a BT keyboard and mouse at the same time on the iPad you could actually use it as a laptop replacement.
Click to expand...
If you're jailbroken, this is certainly feasible with installing BTStack Keyboard and BTStack Mouse from Cydia.
 
Suggest TS to get a mifi with you for travelling, if you reach a country with no LTE network or micro-sim. you could still get the gd ole prepaid sim card to use :D
 
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