apple macbook air opinions

[cardiff_gareth]

So my wife came home today with a MacBook air for me and I'm sort of feeling ungrateful as I've basically said, great but it's no good for me

11" screen, no sd port, no CD drive, no Ethernet connection, no hdmi port, no retina display, no vga output and its £720!

On the plus side it's solid state memory, i5 processor, 2 USB3 ports, a lightning port and 4gb ram

Anyone using one for photography with Lightroom or photoshop?

Are they ok and I've been rather ungrateful or was I right to say nah?

I appreciate you can buy external CD drives, usb SD adaptors, usb to hdmi, usb to Ethernet and lightning to vga but hell that's a faff for that sort of money. Where my wife works its a deprived area so Apple are running an incentive with the school she works at where you only pay £20 a month for 3 years so it's not breaking the bank so I'm torn what to do??

 

[Diving Pete]

take it back - if its not the right kit - get the right kit.

 

[LongLensPhotography]

swap for MBP13 if you can. The air costs fractionally less, but really shouldn't exist at all.

 

[mpe]

The 11" Macbook Air must be the worst Mac for photo editing - 1366x768, TN technology, relatively low end CPU and typically a tiny storage.

I was using Air 2011 13" (base model) for some time. It worked, but it wasn't a great experience. Performancewise it was OK for 12mpx images, but not so much for 24mpx and 36mpx. There was a huge delay in Develop module.

It is better to have an external display otherwise the Lightroom interface will occupy vast majority of the screen and you'll spent most of the time zooming in and out.

Luckily, although there is no direct monitor port, you cab get thunderbolt to DVI adapter for external display.

 

[cardiff_gareth]

Thanks all. She's keeping it for her work as it's ideal for what she needs so for now I'll be keeping my old Dell machine.