Mac setup help

[dbwrobel]

I've been going through many threads and can't decide on a particular setup so I thought I'd open up a thread and get some opinions.

I'm currently doing my masters in aero. engineering and also fly planes on the side/am working towards my commercial license. After I'm finished (in about 4 months) I plan on potentially doing med. school and continuing to fly. I've currently got the 27" i7 iMac at home which I use quite often, but can't decide on whether or not to get and keep a 11" Macbook Air (upgraded 4gb) or iPad 2 (64gb wifi) (I picked up both and have about a week and a half left to return either one).

I've been leaning towards the air since it seems to be the more versatile option, but on the other hand since I have a regular desktop/full mac at home I feel like having something low power on the road to be the better option.

 

[jegbook]

I've been going through many threads and can't decide on a particular setup so I thought I'd open up a thread and get some opinions.

I'm currently doing my masters in aero. engineering and also fly planes on the side/am working towards my commercial license. After I'm finished (in about 4 months) I plan on potentially doing med. school and continuing to fly. I've currently got the 27" i7 iMac at home which I use quite often, but can't decide on whether or not to get and keep a 11" Macbook Air (upgraded 4gb) or iPad 2 (64gb wifi) (I picked up both and have about a week and a half left to return either one).

I've been leaning towards the air since it seems to be the more versatile option, but on the other hand since I have a regular desktop/full mac at home I feel like having something low power on the road to be the better option.

Well, it really depends on what you want/need to do on the road. If you're looking for content consumption and a little bit of e-mail, the iPad seems like a good choice.

If you need a full computer on the road for...? Looking at the applications in the Dock of my MBP, Address Book, iCal, Mail, Safari, Text Editor, iTunes, iPhoto, DVD Player, iChat. Well, you can do most of that with an iPad pretty well and either via cable or MobileMe sync, the data would sync with your iMac.

But then I run Windows in a VM almost all of the time and sometimes need VPN (Watchguard custom) and connect to multiple computers via RDP, the iPad doesn't go there.

So, light duty computing? iPad! Full on computing? MBA 11"!

Cheers.