MBA 11" with HP ZR30w @ 2560x1600 resolution

[ELYEN01]

Hello All,

I am new to the forum and to the Apple world. This is my very first post on the forum. I have recently purchase a Macbook Air 11" (2012 version w/4G RAM 128GB SSD) for home based business with light travel to remote locations. My original plan was to get the rMBP 13" because I think the retina display is awesome, but could not resist the featherweight & smaller size of the MBA 11" when tested at the San Francisco Apple store.

Anyway, I am in the process of discovering what my new MBA 11" can do and would like to share with you guys.

The first thing I did was to purchase a Mini Display Port from the MBA to Display Port to my HP ZR30w 30" IPS monitor. The MBA manged to work at 2560x1600 resolution without stuttering when scroll between webpages as well as watching movies from NetFlix. This is the only laptop that I know of which works & does not required a dual-link DVI cable to the HP ZR30w monitor.

The other thing is it also works with the Razer Black Widow Ultimate 2013 gaming keyboard (Yes, I am a PC gamer).

Below is a couple photos I took on the high resolution screen (sorry for the large photos, still learning on resizing on the Mac):
Photo 1

Photo 2

Here is a picture on how I hooked it up:
Hook up

The MBA 11" looks quite small when sitting next to the 30" monitor:

I really like my new MBA 11" 2012 being versatile and lightweight.

 

[BluePhilG]

Nice setup
I have a 2012 MBA11 Maxed (2.0Ghz/8Gb/512GB) as my main computer, connected to a Del 2713 when I am at home. No issues at all with using the monitor, simply awesome machine.

 

[xShane]

Nice setup and keyboard

 

[DisplacedMic]

way cool!

thanks for posting and welcome to the forums! I think you'll be very happy with your purchase!

congrats and good luck with your business

 

[liquidcentre]

Question about MacBook Air and HP ZR30w

Hi,

I also have the same MacBook Air and had no problems using it at 2560x1600 with my HP ZR30w. However, I recently got a new MacBook Pro Retina and tried hooking it up to the monitor also through the display port and now the external monitor is defaulting to a resolution of 12080x800. I did some research and it looks like as you say perhaps I just lucked into the Macbook Air being compatible. I would like to go back to using the Air at the higher resolution, however it is now stuck at 1280x800. Do you have any ideas how I might reset the monitor to get this to work? Or do I now need to by a DVI dual link adaptor? Or is there some other solution using the HDMI out to DVI?

Thanks very much for any thoughts.