Potentially Switching to an MBA

[freds]

For those of you that have already purchased the 2011 MBA, is it your only / main machine??
OP, when you make a decision, please post your impressions. I'm in the same boat as you lol Started a thread, then the thread participants and I concluded that MBA will fit my needs, but I'm still hesitant about it...

 

[thegilly]

Consider Scrivener as a writing environment--lighter weight than Word and actually designed for the purpose of drafting prose and scripts.

 

[xkmxkmxlmx]

For those of you that have already purchased the 2011 MBA, is it your only / main machine??
OP, when you make a decision, please post your impressions. I'm in the same boat as you lol Started a thread, then the thread participants and I concluded that MBA will fit my needs, but I'm still hesitant about it...

I am *really* struggling with the 13" being my only machine ands I don't do that many heavy tasks. Just sorting and cropping some recent photos as well as writing a few HTML pages for ebay are somewhat of a chore. I might get used to it over time, as I was never really a 'laptop' kind of guy.

Seriously considering an external display at this point (something I was trying to avoid :/).

 

[thelead]

Coming from an avid pc building enthusiast:

From a power standpoint, the 2011 MBA's are fast enough to be my main machine if I didn't need to use pc only audio apps/use windows media center.

I'm new to macs (1 year in) but honestly, the game selection on Mac sucks anyways. I personally couldn't get by without an external monitor though if it was my main machine.

 

[gloss]

For those of you that have already purchased the 2011 MBA, is it your only / main machine??
OP, when you make a decision, please post your impressions. I'm in the same boat as you lol Started a thread, then the thread participants and I concluded that MBA will fit my needs, but I'm still hesitant about it...

I have a big-ass PC desktop in the other room, but for all intents and purposes my MBA has been my main machine since I bought it a couple of weeks ago. Admittedly, I use the PC to store my media, edit photos and play more demanding games. I stream music on my MBA using MOG so I don't have to worry about eating up HD space.

 

[ZBoater]

I have a big-ass PC desktop in the other room, but for all intents and purposes my MBA has been my main machine since I bought it a couple of weeks ago. Admittedly, I use the PC to store my media, edit photos and play more demanding games. I stream music on my MBA using MOG so I don't have to worry about eating up HD space.

I'm in exactly the same boat. As a matter of fact, my MBA has spoiled me so I decided to upgrade my Dell XPS720H2C to 8GB of RAM and a Samsung SSD drive just so I don't have to be too disappointed every time I have to use it....

 

[Ironsoccerman]

Hold off on all Mac purchases!!!! New ones are coming out soon

Every time i come across you its always about a new mac thing

 

[Fernandez21]

I did a test opening over 15 apps at once (including both versions, Mac and Windows, of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and all three browsers with multiple tabs open (Chrome, Firefox and Safari)) and the MBA didn't skip a beat. Mind you that was with Parallels running a Windows 7 VM using up half the cores and memory.

Thats good to know, I've yet to push my mac that much. Most extensive work I guess would be having iTunes running while running a couple of websites and pages.

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For those of you that have already purchased the 2011 MBA, is it your only / main machine??
OP, when you make a decision, please post your impressions. I'm in the same boat as you lol Started a thread, then the thread participants and I concluded that MBA will fit my needs, but I'm still hesitant about it...

Yes, my 11" air is my main and only laptop, though I still have my old 13" dell collecting dust in the closet. It hasn't been a problem for me at all, though I have always been the kind to prefer portability over screen size/power. The 11" screen has been no problem for me what so ever, and neither has been the keyboard/palm rest, and the trackpad is actually almost twice as big as the one on my old dell. It has more than enough power for what I use it for, word docs., pdf, web surfing, iTunes, Hulu, Netflix and some gaming. The only gaming I do on it is with emulators of old systems (N64, SNES, NES) and those run perfectly fine at max settings. Totally recommend unless you absolutely need a bigger screen or want to play current games.