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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

#201

Post by rowaway1 »

wyclif wrote: post #153
Shorel wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no, no. That's why the F and J keys have small bumps you can feel so you can position your hands for touch typing. The 5 key in the numeric keyboard also has one of these. The backlight can be useful for the function keys or whatever, but touch typing does not need any light.

As a touch typist I've never understood the fetish for backlit keyboard design, I don't need it and it only decreases battery power.

people who work in the dark, but have not achieved total union with the keyboard, appreciate the backlight. forced battery drain isn't an issue: turn off the light if you don't want.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#202

Post by rowaway1 »

chrisbolt wrote: post #196
rowaway1 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

backlit keyboard aren't just for looking nice. they're for working at night in dark rooms. before touch typing you need to glance quickly at your hand's position above the keys, to make sure your hand position isn't transposed slightly up, down, left, right--which happens easily when you're blinded by a monitor in the dark, and the key bed is pitch black. yes, you can fold down your monitor till the light illuminates…

I've never used a laptop where the keys weren't illuminated by the big LCD behind them.

you've never stared into a bright LCD in the dark and become blind to the keyboard? if so, cool. but many people have sensitive eyes.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#203

Post by rodh257 »

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 recently bought a 2011 MBP 13" and did this. SSD with Win7 in the cd bay, 7200rpm drive with OSX in main bay.

Boy is the 'no boot from USB' thing on the new Macbooks a giant pain in the ass! Installing it is one thing, but last night for some reason Windows wouldn't boot so I needed to to startup repair, had to unscrew the whole thing and put the superdrive back in to do it. Should have been a 5 min operation, wasted a days work (superdrive was at home).

I wonder if I can make a 5gb partition on my main drive to be a windows install disk in case it happens again?

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#204

Post by edandersen »

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…

>> Japan is small and fiber-wired, so there is no lag typing.

I've been using an 11 inch Air in Japan for the last few weeks and thanks to the full size keyboard, there is nothing you can't do on it when combined with wifi or a tethered iPhone. Have your large desktop machine in the office or at home always on and just remote into it. Remote desktopping into an 8-core i7 over a 3G connection gives you 7 hours of battery life and a very powerful machine to work on.

The Air is almost the perfect "thin client" - even the 2GB/64GB model is more than enough if you have decent connectivity. Use local mail client, browser and Office for light local work and click an icon in the dock to instantly have access to a powerful development machine.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#205

Post by vacri »

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'm always surprised by people that don't see 13" screens as having a utility value - portability. I've recommended people get 13" laptops when their needs require this portability (eg: tertiary students). Those that said "no, I want a big screen!" for the e-peen value later regretted lugging a 15" screen around. Big screens are awesome... unless you're moving around a lot.

Personally, I love my little 12" thinkpad :)

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#206

Post by yardie »

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?

It's probably better to say that OSX power management is better on Apple hardware than all the rest. I was getting about 40% less time when using Windows XP than when I was using OSX.

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#207

Post by glhaynes »

masklinn wrote: post #66
glhaynes wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say a little bit more about why DP is more suited for computers than HDMI?

* It's both internal and external, so in a laptop you can drive both the laptop's own screen and the external A/V plug with the same display interface (instead of having an internal LVDS interface and an external HDMI one for instance) * It's backwards compatible with DVI-I (and HDMI for that matter): you can carry DVI-I or HDMI signals on a DP cable and only need a passive adapter (although that is limited to single…

Thank you - what a nice answer!

Re: MacBook Air is enough for a work machine

#209

Post by japherwocky »

tomkinstinch wrote: post #96
japherwocky wrote: post #67

Dell made a laptop with similar specs called the 'Adamo' for a while. It's small, light and sexy, costs about half as much as an MBA, and Ubuntu worked out of the box. A good alternative if you'd like to avoid the Apple flavored kool-aid.

I couldn't find the "Adamo" listed on Dell's US website, but it is listed on Amazon[1] for ~$1261. That's only a touch less than a MacBook Air. Where did you find it for "half as much?" 1. http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Adamo-A13-6349PWH-13-4-Inch-Lapto...

I bought mine last fall for $900, and I guess I'm not up on the latest MacBook pricing. Sincerest apologies.
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