MacBookAir and ditch imac?

[iamthedudeman]

I need some advice.

I own and operate a marketing firm and spend long days at the office. Currently I ditched my Windows laptop since I converted the whole firm to Mac. I have 4 Mac Pros, 27 iMacs. All bought by me but not 'mine' to use. They are for employees.

I need another iMac for a new employee so I gave her mine from my office not wanting to spend for another one. I thought I can use my iPad 2 just sit at the conference table and do my work in my office. But the iPad 2 and keyboard combo is not getting it done. Not good enough.

I have a imac 27 2.93 2010 with SSD and 12GB ram at home right now. I need something that is mobile, and can do most of the work my iMac can do right now. I mostly do presentations, writing, etc. Some light Auto Cad stuff, nothing major.

Would a Mac BookAir 13.3 with the Core i7 and Thunderbolt display take care of most of my needs? Is the 4gb ram limiting? I will be getting a Thunderbolt display for the office too. I think i will just need some input from some Air users out there. The Air would let me continue my work at home on the bigger display form the office instead of transferring the work from my iPad 2 or borrowed iMac at work to home.

My brother in law offered me $2,300 for the iMac. I complained that I should get a laptop for work and then he offered to buy it from me. The iMac is flawless. No stuck pixels, yellowing of any kind. Perfect. Only four months old.

Any ideas?

 

[Beanoir]

I reckon an MBA would manage to get by with what you've described, but you'll miss the iMac.

Will you still have occasional use of an iMac in the office when you really need it?

If so then i'd say go for it.

 

[Daniel97]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A5313e Safari/7534.48.3)

MBA & TBD?

 

[henry72]

If weight is not a big issues for you, I'd say 15" MacBook Pro + High-res screen. This will give you a powerful notebook on the go plus a nice screen when you're in the office. You can add up to 8GB Ram and you will have more storage as well.

Personally, I wouldn't want to manage more than 1 computer. I also don't the idea of plugging a monitor because I have to adjust the windows size all the time due to different resolution on the screen (This is just me being fussy)

Hope this helps.

 

[Abazigal]

I recommend the 15' MBP as well. If you are in the office most of the time, the weight shouldn't be an issue, but you can still bring it easily to and from home (assuming you drive).

 

[alecgold]

I have a smaller firm as a consultant and am at clients about 1/3 to 1/2 my time and about 2/3 to 1/2 my time at the office writing proposals, working things out in excel sheets, keeping the other people in my office awake and busy etc.

I had a 13" and an iPad, but the iPad didn't work for me. So I sold them and got an 11" MBA back. I don't do any heavy stuff myself, so it's perfect. At the office I now have a thunderbolt display which is great. A darn lot of real estate, I plug in two cables and the MBA is charging and I've got ethernet, all USB things, printers etc, firewire backup disk (later this year I might get a thunderbolt drive).
if I need to work at home I can use the 11". That is not comfortable, but I don't want to make it to easy. I work long, long weeks, don't mind that, but if I don't stop working, I shouldn't have gotten a wife, baby on the way etc. So when I'm home, I'm doing family business. The 11" helps a bit at doing that, while still being able to safe the day when some file went awol and it is needed right now or a proposal needs to be reviewed and approved to meet a deadline. (after which the person responsible is told in friendly but very understandable language to manage his/her tasks, time and projects better, then it wouldn't have been needed to call me at this ungodly hour )

 

[iamthedudeman]

I have a smaller firm as a consultant and am at clients about 1/3 to 1/2 my time and about 2/3 to 1/2 my time at the office writing proposals, working things out in excel sheets, keeping the other people in my office awake and busy etc.

I had a 13" and an iPad, but the iPad didn't work for me. So I sold them and got an 11" MBA back. I don't do any heavy stuff myself, so it's perfect. At the office I now have a thunderbolt display which is great. A darn lot of real estate, I plug in two cables and the MBA is charging and I've got ethernet, all USB things, printers etc, firewire backup disk (later this year I might get a thunderbolt drive).
if I need to work at home I can use the 11". That is not comfortable, but I don't want to make it to easy. I work long, long weeks, don't mind that, but if I don't stop working, I shouldn't have gotten a wife, baby on the way etc. So when I'm home, I'm doing family business. The 11" helps a bit at doing that, while still being able to safe the day when some file went awol and it is needed right now or a proposal needs to be reviewed and approved to meet a deadline. (after which the person responsible is told in friendly but very understandable language to manage his/her tasks, time and projects better, then it wouldn't have been needed to call me at this ungodly hour )

You seem to be in a similar situation as myself, but my daughter is six! Lol

It seems to be working for you
and should work for me. thanks for the post.

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I reckon an MBA would manage to get by with what you've described, but you'll miss the iMac.

Will you still have occasional use of an iMac in the office when you really need it?

If so then i'd say go for it.

Why would i miss the mac? wouldnt a i7 13.3 air with thunderbolt display do 99% of what i need? Is the four gigs of ram limiting for the kind of work that i do?
And i will still have use of Mac Pros and imacs when i need them.

I need some thing that go with me everywhere, meetings across town, restaurants,home,vacations,clients etc. so i need something ultra portable but still can do all the work of my current imac. Mac pro would be too big for something i need to have with me at almost all times.
If i hook it to a thunderbolt display wouldnt that give me most of the functionally of the imac? i will be getting the core i7 13.3 Air with thunderbolt display, actually two of them one for work and one for home.

 

[Macman45]

I Use Both

But I think a 13" Air would suit you fine. As posted above, you can still use an iMac when you need to.

I need both machines for hardcore tasks, video editing on a 13" screen just doesn't cut it, although the MBA is more than up to the job. I hold data and backups on the Air, transfer them to my iMac for serious edit and burn work.

 

[Beanoir]

You seem to be in a similar situation as myself, but my daughter is six! Lol

It seems to be working for you
and should work for me. thanks for the post.

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Why would i miss the mac? wouldnt a i7 13.3 air with thunderbolt display do 99% of what i need? Is the four gigs of ram limiting for the kind of work that i do?
And i will still have use of Mac Pros and imacs when i need them.

I need some thing that go with me everywhere, meetings across town, restaurants,home,vacations,clients etc. so i need something ultra portable but still can do all the work of my current imac. Mac pro would be too big for something i need to have with me at almost all times.
If i hook it to a thunderbolt display wouldnt that give me most of the functionally of the imac? i will be getting the core i7 13.3 Air with thunderbolt display, actually two of them one for work and one for home.

I missed the bit about you getting a display, in which case then I don't think given the kind of work you describe doing, that you'd miss much at all.

 

[iamthedudeman]

But I think a 13" Air would suit you fine. As posted above, you can still use an iMac when you need to.

I need both machines for hardcore tasks, video editing on a 13" screen just doesn't cut it, although the MBA is more than up to the job. I hold data and backups on the Air, transfer them to my iMac for serious edit and burn work.

But isn't the thunderbolt display the same as the 27 imac? Would the 2011 Air espicially the i7 be powerfull enough. It is as powerfull as a mac pro i7 from last year (2010) which was top of the line.

So it should be able to do the same sans imac. Would a imac really be needed? The geekbench score for the i7 air is around 7000. My imac is around 10500. Big difference but i dont really use that much power.

Thank you all for all the replies. Much appreciated.

 

[Macman45]

I Need The iMac

But isn't the thunderbolt display the same as the 27 imac? Would the 2011 Air espicially the i7 be powerfull enough. It is as powerfull as a mac pro from last year. So it should be able to do the same sans imac. Would a imac really be needed? The geekbench score for the i7 air is around 7000. My imac is around 10500. Big difference but i dont really use that much power.

For the real estate and display, a 2011 Air will do you perfectly, the SSD is a killer, really fast and as long as you don't need lots of hdd space it will easily do what you need.

You don't need the iMac for daily business tasks.

 

[iamthedudeman]

For the real estate and display, a 2011 Air will do you perfectly, the SSD is a killer, really fast and as long as you don't need lots of hdd space it will easily do what you need.

You don't need the iMac for daily business tasks.

You guys set my mind at ease. I was going back and fourth should i or not. So a 27 TBD and i7 13.3 Air it is.

Thanks for the replies. I feel sane again. Lol

 

[Funkymonk]

The air + display combo will be just fine for you.

 

[alecgold]

Glad it helped, that's why this can be such a great place.
It can be a bit maddening to keep going between two choices and not being sure what is the right choice.

Let us know how it works out for you, in a week or month orso.
I'm not curious, but I just like to know everything (that could be on my headstone!)

 

[KohPhiPhi]

Performance wise, you won't miss the iMac but you will miss the iMac's screen though. Why not trading the iMac for a MBA + ACD 27"? You retain the screen real state and you gain portability.

Trust me, MBA + ACD 27" is a winning combo as you get the best from both worlds.

 

[jsolares]

The thing i missed the most while they were replacing the LCD on my iMac was the display of the iMac, secondly would be the amount of ram, i have 12GB on the iMac, so when i had to run two virtual machines in tandem i pretty much had to close everything else down.

The thing i miss the most of the Air now that i have the iMac back is the SSD.

 

[iamthedudeman]

Performance wise, you won't miss the iMac but you will miss the iMac's screen though. Why not trading the iMac for a MBA + ACD 27"? You retain the screen real state and you gain portability.

Trust me, MBA + ACD 27" is a winning combo as you get the best from both worlds.

Don't you mean a 27 TBD + MBA 13.3 with i7. Already mentioned above. I agree.

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Glad it helped, that's why this can be such a great place.
It can be a bit maddening to keep going between two choices and not being sure what is the right choice.

Let us know how it works out for you, in a week or month orso.
I'm not curious, but I just like to know everything (that could be on my headstone!)

I agree. Thanks for the replies.

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The thing i missed the most while they were replacing the LCD on my iMac was the display of the iMac, secondly would be the amount of ram, i have 12GB on the iMac, so when i had to run two virtual machines in tandem i pretty much had to close everything else down.

The thing i miss the most of the Air now that i have the iMac back is the SSD.

Well I will not miss it since my iMac already has a 256 SSD. With the 27 TBD I will hopefully not miss the screen. My iMac screen right now is flawless, lets hope the TBD will be too. I also have 12 GB on the iMac and current usage I use way under 2GB so that shouldn't be a problem.

I hate that you are limited to 4GB but that is a small trade off for such portability. Wouldn't the page swaps if it happens be minimal since the SSD is so fast? My marketing manager has a air and he says he doesn't even notice them because the speed of the SSD. Hope the same goes for me.