MacBook Air is enough for a work machine • Hacker News Board

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#51

Post by enko » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 3:22 PM UTC

bergie wrote: post #14

chime wrote: post #12

I use MBA (4GB RAM upgrade, 128GB SSD) for doing a lot of XCode development. XCode4 runs very smoothly and I've never had any speed issues with running the iOS Simulator. It's light, doesn't heat up, and is very stable. I gave up my http://chir.ag/stuff/5lcd.jpg setup for a single MBA and I couldn't be happier (my electric bill went down by $125/month). From personal experience I know that I'm more productive on 5 LC…

I'm the only one in our company not using any external monitors. The added screen real estate would be nice, but the downside is that then you have a different setup in the office and on the road. I rather get used to a single screen I always have with me.

I'm the same way. I actually have an external monitor on my desk; it sits unused. I used to use it but over time I became so used to a single screen, and context switching within it, that I don't bother plugging it in any more. Ditto my external keyboard, though I confess to occasionally reaching for my bluetooth mouse.

I have co-workers who are the exact opposite; 3 or 4 screens, it's never enough, but I just feel like it's not necessary for me any more. You can only look at one thing at a time. Whether switching your view between monitors, or switching between programs, it's basically the same thing - the difference is, I can do the latter anywhere, and be just as productive in a coffee shop or on a plane.

Exceptions would be monitoring a large number of logs, or programs that require large GUIs (Photoshop, music sequencers). There, screen real estate is important. But for programming? Not for me.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#52

Post by pohl » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 3:25 PM UTC

baudehlo wrote: post #26

_Fil_ wrote: post #8

The only thing that stops me from buying one is the 10/100 lan adapter. I transfer every day large files between my mac and my pc or NAS and the transfer rate would kill me.

This. In a corporate environment wifi just isn't allowed. We have it in our office but it is stunted beyond reproach. You need to be plugged in to access stuff.

It doesn't make any sense to mod this down. It's a real issue.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#53

Post by ernestipark » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 3:25 PM UTC

dadro wrote: post #4

I concur with authors opinion of MBA. The 13in MBA is the best computer I've ever owned. My current Mac Lineup consists of: * Latest gen 13in MBA * 17in MBP (~1yr) work paid for it * 13in Black Macbook (loved this one too!) * Mac Pro (totally pimped out) work paid for it * 3rd gen mac mini The only machine I use now is the MBA. It is everything a Web Dev needs, great resolution, fast, travels well. It even plays Mine…

I don't understand this obsession for backlit keyboards I've been reading about a lot lately on forums. It definitely looks nice but its just a battery drain and I assume most HN people don't look at their keys. I always keep mine off for the sake of my battery.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#54

Post by ben1040 » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 3:27 PM UTC

I've owned the original 12" Powerbook G4, and the first-gen MacBook Air (no SSD). With both of those I ended up with some buyers remorse about six months later, feeling like I was making some huge performance tradeoffs for the portability that ended up biting me later on. The 12" G4 was just plain slow, while the first-gen Air was hamstrung with crappy GMA950 graphics and a really slow disk. From what I've read the SSD on the original Air was on an IDE interface and wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway.

I bought the new 13" Air the week after launch and absolutely love it for a dev environment. XCode runs nice and smooth and it now seems to me that an SSD is nearly essential to make Eclipse feel usable.

We're coming up to the 6 month point where with those older laptops I would think "oh God why did I spend $1800 on this," and I still think this is the best computer I've ever owned.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#55

Post by quinndupont » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 3:29 PM UTC

Tangential question: I've got a MacBook Air and a first gen (of the current design) white plastic MacBook that stores all my music/video (300GB music, 100GB video, with a bunch more video on external USB drive). My issue is that it is very slow these days, and I feel like it is IO bound with my big, kinda slow HD. I'm considering replacing the optical drive with the OWC SSD hack. Then, the OS & apps can live on the SSD, music and video on slow HD. Thoughts on performance? Anyone else try this?

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#56

Post by grandalf » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 3:30 PM UTC

I've been using an 11" macbook air for the past few months as a development machine and it works just fine. I use emacs and ruby 1.9 mostly.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#57

Post by daimyoyo » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 3:33 PM UTC

I suppose if money were no object I'd probably get a MBA but the fact is that the 13" MBP I ended up getting is more than enough for what I use it for and was 25% cheaper. And when every dollar counts, that's important.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#58

Post by dr_ » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 3:35 PM UTC

I've owned the 11.6" MBA for a couple of months now and it works great. It's portability is fantastic because I have to take it with me to several locations where I don't have a lot of work space. It's fast and the battery life is decent enough so that during the day I really don't require a power cord (but I don't go online much with it during the workday). The only time I see it slow down a little is when I'm accessing my Yahoo email in Outlook.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#59

Post by ScottBurson » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 3:36 PM UTC

Interesting that I seem to be the only 17-inch fan here. I can see the attraction of an MBA, but I prefer having a screen big enough that I can do everything on it without an external monitor, and I don't mind lugging it around at all.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#60

Post by runjake » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 3:38 PM UTC

bergie wrote: post #6

JCB_K wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply put, the 11" MacBook Air is the best computer I've ever had. I've always appreciated small and light laptops as I travel quite a bit, but this one takes portability to a completely new level. The laptop weights only a kilogram, and is small enough to fit pretty much any bag. I also hate the display adapters Apple forces us to buy and carry around. I give a lot of presentations, and this is another piece of equ…

HDMI is almost the same size as the Mini DisplayPort. Apple just loves their own connectors, unfortunately. I was shocked when I noticed the VGA adapter wasn't included in the package. Luckily I realized this before my first conference presentation with the new computer ;-)

If by "almost" you mean "over twice as big", sure. (I happen to have an HDMI connector sitting next to my MBP's Thunderbolt (nee Mini-DisplayPort) port.

Edit: They have "mini-HDMI" out, which is an entirely different beast than the mini-HDMI adapters included on many Android smartphones. A mini-HDMI port would require similar adapters to connect to anything useful.

A normal "type-A" HDMI port is a sizeable connector, larger than a USB port.