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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Anyone Use A Low End MacBook Air?
Jim Colburn, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Omaha | NE | USA | Posted: 1:57 PM on 07.28.11 |
->> I'm thinking of getting an 11inch, 2Gb RAM, 64Gb SSD for non-assignment travel and light-weight messing about but there might be some times when I'd have to edit and transmit in an emergency (I have a 17 inch MacBook Pro for the heavy lifting).
Has anyone used one of these "low end" MacBook Airs? I'd need it to run Aperture for editing RAW files and Photo Mechanic for ingest and captioning.
I'm assuming that it's alright for emailing, web surfing, etc.
TIA |
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Don Feria, Photographer, Assistant
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union city | CA | United States | Posted: 2:55 PM on 07.28.11 |
| ->> I use one, but with 4gb of ram. For quick editing/xmitting, works great. I'm on photo mechanic and photoshop raw, but have seen lightroom on one and works just as well. |
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Mitch Traphagen, Photographer
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Ruskin | FL | USA | Posted: 2:56 PM on 07.28.11 |
->> I use one -- it's been just fine for Photo Mechanic, Photoshop, InDesign, etc (haven't tried Aperture). It does bog down a bit when I get 15 or 20+ Safari windows open (and / or sometimes when I leave Photoshop open for too long). I do video editing on a Mac Pro or my Macbook Pro so no knowledge there. I do wish it had a FW800 port but throwing stuff off to a portable USB drive has worked well enough. So far I love it and haven't regretted purchasing the low end in this case.
Overall, it has been flawless. |
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George Bridges, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington | DC | USA | Posted: 3:35 PM on 07.28.11 |
->> Jim,
I use one for baseball coverage. I tether USB directly to it and have PhotoMechanic process it. Then launch RAW into Photoshop, crop, tone and save back to caption in PM. Mine is the 128 SSD and 4GB RAM, 11-inch.
It can be a little slow opening large files, but works well when you have to get stuff out. I probably wouldn't use one for football where I'm sending 20-30 images, but for baseball where it's 10-15 images send sporadically (I try to send at half innings) it works great.
This is the previous version. The new one just introduced promises to be tons faster. Some benchmarks put it faster than last year's MB Pro models so it should be plenty zippy.
Will definitely fit your requirements. |
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Francis Specker, Photographer
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Riverside | CA | USA | Posted: 5:01 PM on 07.28.11 |
| ->> I have the 11-inch 2GB 64GB SSD version that came out last year. No real problems with running Photomechanic and Photoshop CS4. You can't open up 20 images at a time in Photoshop with 2GB of ram, but 5-6 at a time is fine. Super light and the go-to laptop when I have to put it in my bag and carry it with my gear. I think the key to this laptop is the SSD. Will not buy a new laptop without one. |
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Jim Colburn, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Omaha | NE | USA | Posted: 2:10 PM on 07.29.11 |
| ->> Many thanks. |
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Brad Tollefson, Student/Intern, Photo Editor
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Lubbock | TX | USA | Posted: 11:40 AM on 07.30.11 |
->> Also for future reference, make sure you up your ram when purchase it. Because it is soldered onto the board preventing use of third party memory.
Brad |
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