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MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

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Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#161

Post by scott_s »

veidr wrote: post #158
scott_s wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose this is because I work in the area of high performance systems research, but I never compile locally. All of my compilation and execution happen on a remote cluster. I've used a 13" or 15" Macbook Pro for all of my work for the past three years.

That sounds pretty cool. We don't have the infrastructure to do that, but I did recently spend a week working out of town where I had only my 17" MacBook Pro. I became frustrated on the first day, and switched to coding on my Mac Pro back in Tokyo via remote desktop. Japan is small and fiber-wired, so there is no lag typing. There's only some flicker when dragging large windows. It worked well, but I don't think that…

Now, the cluster I have access to is impressive (several hundred nodes of 4 cores machines, separate development and execution nodes). But as a grad student, it was one Dell PowerEdge server that was the head node to a PS3 cluster, and another Dell PowerEdge that served as the backup file server. Both of the Dell PowerEdges cost between $5-10k.

I did have luxuries - most of the time I was the only one using the machines. But as a grad student, I don't think I had access to more resources than someone at a small software firm. However, I did only need to deal with text input and output. I can see having to compile, execute and test locally when dealing with consumer software.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#162

Post by matthew-wegner »

matthew-wegner wrote: post #103

Not MBA-related, but for MBP machines you can use an OptiBay bracket to pull out the optical drive and replace it with an SSD or HD. Couple notes on that: - The OptiBay is $80, but includes a USB enclosure for your SuperDrive to turn it into an external drive: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ - Cheap clone brackets are ~$20 on eBay, work just as well. - The original HD bay includes a sudden motion sensor to park the h…

Oh, and it's worth mentioning--I fully expect Apple to remove the optical bay entirely in their 2012 design refresh. Mayyyybe they'll keep a second bay as a stock option, but I doubt it!

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#163

Post by kenneth_reitz »

matthew-wegner wrote: post #103

Not MBA-related, but for MBP machines you can use an OptiBay bracket to pull out the optical drive and replace it with an SSD or HD. Couple notes on that: - The OptiBay is $80, but includes a USB enclosure for your SuperDrive to turn it into an external drive: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ - Cheap clone brackets are ~$20 on eBay, work just as well. - The original HD bay includes a sudden motion sensor to park the h…

I have a 250GB SSD + 1TB HDD thanks to the optibay. I couldn't be happier.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#164

Post by zcid »

rufo wrote: post #48
bergie wrote: post #2

Also my personal notes on the same, running Ubuntu instead of OS X: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/11-macbook_air-the_best_computer_i...

You say you get 3-4 hours in Linux, but the benchmarks you link to claim easily 7 hours in OS X (though dramatically less if you max out the CPU). Are you pretty much always at high CPU utilization, or is Ubuntu's power management of Mac hardware that poor?

I get only about 2.5 hours when running Arch Linux compared to almost double when I used to run OS X on my MBP 5,3. I rarely use my laptop unplugged though so it doesn't make a huge difference to me.

I think a large part of the difference on my machine is that you are forced to use the 9600GT for video as opposed to the more efficient 9600M that is available in OS X.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#165

Post by laut »

lightoverhead wrote: post #159

I'm really not a fun for Mac stuff. It's just a fashion thing, not for work. For the money you spent on Mac, you can definitely buy a cheap powerful machine with free reliable Linux system. No matter to say its monopoly of market, even an adapter to projector need its own. I have seen so many times someone using a Mac but forgot bringing that stupid adapter for projector, she/he had to change to PC to do the presenta…

Macs "just work" for things where Linux doesn't. Photoshop doesn't run natively on Linux, that's alone is enough for many to choose OS X over Linux.

For many people the price difference (if it's there) doesn't matter.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#166

Post by sjs »

achompas wrote: post #135
pyre wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that point is that if he were buying a MBP that it would not be able to justify the purchase to himself without maxing everything out. So that price comparison is really only applicable to him.

Right, but even then that's not a clear comparison. Maxing out a 15" MBP makes no sense for him--he bought a 13" MBA, so he clearly believed that 256 GB SSD + 4GB RAM would cover his needs. Does he have to always max out his Apple equipment purchases?

I feel that it makes sense. When weighing the options I came to the exact same conclusion as the author, except my notebook is If I were to buy a Pro it'd be the 15" for its resolution, and I definitely want 8GB of memory. However the 13" Air is compelling because of the size & weight. If it were available with 8GB of memory that would be the way to go, but it's not.

Personally I'm holding out for the 15" Air. Ideally with a faster CPU (Core i3 or i5 is fine), up to 8GB or 16GB of memory, and a resolution of 1680x1050. While I'm wishing it should also have a matte option. The Air is nice but it's not a portable workstation replacement, yet.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#167

Post by colomon »

veidr wrote: post #134

Workflows vary, of course. And yeah, for non-programmers, I think the Air is a great machine--good enough to be the primary machine for most people. But for full-time programming work, I think it is absolutely fucking batshit insane to use anything less than a modern 12-core Mac Pro with 32 GB RAM and an SSD RAID boot volume (at which point multiple 2560 x something monitors are de rigueur ). That's certainly true fo…

Wow. You think it's "absolutely fucking batshit insane to use anything less" than a $8000 computer for full time programming work? (Not counting monitors.) Either you're rolling in money or you're not paying the bills.

I mean, absolutely my work could use that kind of power. My compiles routinely take minutes, and I run tests pretty regularly that are measured in hours, not seconds. I spawn off most of those tests to a Linux machine in the basement so it doesn't slow down my main development machine -- but no doubt it would be very nice if those tests ran 3x faster, and compiles were magically fast.

But I don't think it would be nice enough to justify forgoing our retirement savings every year we needed a new computer...

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#168

Post by dasil003 »

phamilton wrote: post #138
dasil003 wrote: post #104

Every time I get on a plane I wish I had an Air, but it's just not justifiable. Not only do I have and use my 8GB RAM (Photoshop, Parallels, browsers, Rails + large test suite), but the peripheral ports are critical. I don't think my Time Machine backup would ever get off the ground without the initial Ethernet plugin, not to mention the times when the DSL goes out at the office I can just plug into the hardline norm…

"(although I do salivate at the thought of a top-tier 64GB SSD boot drive + 1TB data drive in optical drive bay)." SSDs are interesting in that they get faster as they grow in size. top-tier 64GB SSD drives are quite a bit slower (at least in write speeds) than their 128GB counterparts, which are slower than their 256GB counterparts. Write speeds scale almost linearly with size. I'd salivate for something a little qu…

When I bought my 160GB Intel X25, my understanding at the time was that the fastest SSD available was a more expensive 64GB drive. I haven't looked at the landscape for a while now though.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#169

Post by sjs »

scott_s wrote: post #151
achompas wrote: post #42

My MacBook Air was $1,799 and the equivalent MacBook Pro (top of the line 15″, because why would you buy the 13″?) would cost me just over $3,200 (adding 3rd party SSD, Apple 8GB RAM and the Hi-Res screen). Man, this is disingenuous. 8GB RAM? As if you can't get it cheaper (or the MBA even offered 8GB RAM as an option)? Or as if the 15" MBP doesn't blow the Air out of the water in every other aspect? I bought a 13" P…

I agree the comparison was not valid, but the MBA's value is more than just a built-in SSD. It is significantly lighter.

Lighter, thinner, higher res at the same physical dimensions.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#170

Post by dasil003 »

onedognight wrote: post #119
dasil003 wrote: post #104

Every time I get on a plane I wish I had an Air, but it's just not justifiable. Not only do I have and use my 8GB RAM (Photoshop, Parallels, browsers, Rails + large test suite), but the peripheral ports are critical. I don't think my Time Machine backup would ever get off the ground without the initial Ethernet plugin, not to mention the times when the DSL goes out at the office I can just plug into the hardline norm…

> my Time Machine backup would ever get off the ground without the initial Ethernet plugin For this one time usage the tiny USB/Ethernet adapter seems like a fine compromise. > Even the SD card reader is quite handy. The MacBook Air has an SD card reader.

> For this one time usage the tiny USB/Ethernet adapter seems like a fine compromise.

How's the speed on that?

> The MacBook Air has an SD card reader.

Ah, I was looking at the 11" oops

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