I've been trolling the forums regarding the usefulness of a base 13" MacBook Air for a full-time graphic designer who spends 8 hours a day going between Photoshop, Illustrator, inDesign and Flash and decided to find out for myself.
In short, it's more than adequate, especially coming from a 15" C2D. With all 4 bloated apps open, in addition to numerous large PDF's, a time tracking app (On The Job, by Stunt Software), and safari with probably 10 tabs, this machine is running without a hiccup.
I do have the latest maxed out 27" iMac (with 16 gigs of ram) for heavy lifting, and I should say that the Air is really just for hauling around to deal with unforeseen client "emergencies" that pop up while I'm away from my office.
That said, I'm honestly having a hard time noticing a major difference in most of my CS5.5 workflow between my iMac and the Air. I suppose the real issue is for those who deal with rendering all day long, but for your run of the mill print/web designer the Air will do just fine as a secondary machine.
Don't listen to the people that say the Air is just for e-mail.
In short, it's more than adequate, especially coming from a 15" C2D. With all 4 bloated apps open, in addition to numerous large PDF's, a time tracking app (On The Job, by Stunt Software), and safari with probably 10 tabs, this machine is running without a hiccup.
I do have the latest maxed out 27" iMac (with 16 gigs of ram) for heavy lifting, and I should say that the Air is really just for hauling around to deal with unforeseen client "emergencies" that pop up while I'm away from my office.
That said, I'm honestly having a hard time noticing a major difference in most of my CS5.5 workflow between my iMac and the Air. I suppose the real issue is for those who deal with rendering all day long, but for your run of the mill print/web designer the Air will do just fine as a secondary machine.
Don't listen to the people that say the Air is just for e-mail.