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Macbook air has made my iMac redundant!
- Thread starter leemkule
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Welcome to the club
I was in a similar boat like you and even a little further,....
With the arrival of my base model MBA 11" to the day i sold my:
• Mac Pro & 30" ACD
• 27" iMac
• 17" uMBP
• iPad WiFi/3G 64GB
My keepers for now are:
• MBA & 27" ACD
• Mac mini Server
• iPhone 4
These three fit my needs just perfect,.... also consider i am working within the IT business,...
I would say if you not need it, go for it and sell it!
Simplify your computing life!
Just my 2cents
This is almost what I did exactly, also I'm also working in IT;
Before MBA:
iMac
MBP
Mini Server
iPad
iPhone4
Now;
MBA 13
Mini Server
iPhone4
Only complaint is that I wish the HD was larger. If Apple came out with a MBA that was 15 inch, backlight keyboard, and included a second slow, but large HD I'd switch to that.
I still use my 24" iMac everyday. MBA definitely gets the job done but I don't know, iMac is a wonderful computer as well. I prefer having the bigger screen and a discrete keyboard (faster to type with it). I might sell the iMac and build a PC but since it's 24", I would lose too much money. It's less than two years old too
i dont really do content creation like PS,Lightroom or premiere and the only encoding i do is when i convert movies into ipad,iphone format so honestly the only difference is whether it can run games basically and watch hd videos which it can
Its ok, each for their own needs, nought wrong with a PC at all (i'm not just a Mac man myself). I was struggling with the connection to that and the topic of the thread.
Agree
I'm selling my i5 iMac. The best computer is the one you have on you and the MBA is always with me. I have the loaded 13-inch btw and I'm using it with a 27-inch ACD. I like having quad core and 8GB of memory but the reality is I never really use that power. The SSD speed, size, and weight more than make up for the difference in processing power because I use it so much more than going down in my office to use my iMac. It doesn't do me as much good to have all that iMac power if I can only use it in one place. My 64GB iPad may also be in peril but I'm not sure about that yet.
I'm selling my i5 iMac. The best computer is the one you have on you and the MBA is always with me. I have the loaded 13-inch btw and I'm using it with a 27-inch ACD. I like having quad core and 8GB of memory but the reality is I never really use that power. The SSD speed, size, and weight more than make up for the difference in processing power because I use it so much more than going down in my office to use my iMac. It doesn't do me as much good to have all that iMac power if I can only use it in one place. My 64GB iPad may also be in peril but I'm not sure about that yet.
Welcome to the club
I was in a similar boat like you and even a little further,....
With the arrival of my base model MBA 11" to the day i sold my:
Mac Pro & 30" ACD
27" iMac
17" uMBP
iPad WiFi/3G 64GB
My keepers for now are:
MBA & 27" ACD
Mac mini Server
iPhone 4
These three fit my needs just perfect,.... also consider i am working within the IT business,...
I would say if you not need it, go for it and sell it!
Simplify your computing life!
Just my 2cents
I envy you and dislike you at the same time. Why buy a Mac Pro, 30" ACD, 27" iMac, 17" uMBP and iPad if all you need is an 11" Air?
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Because he can? Lol
nick9191 said:Welcome to the club
I was in a similar boat like you and even a little further,....
With the arrival of my base model MBA 11" to the day i sold my:
Mac Pro & 30" ACD
27" iMac
17" uMBP
iPad WiFi/3G 64GB
My keepers for now are:
MBA & 27" ACD
Mac mini Server
iPhone 4
These three fit my needs just perfect,.... also consider i am working within the IT business,...
I would say if you not need it, go for it and sell it!
Simplify your computing life!
Just my 2cents
I envy you and dislike you at the same time. Why buy a Mac Pro, 30" ACD, 27" iMac, 17" uMBP and iPad if all you need is an 11" Air?
Because he can? Lol
Well, while I love my new MBA 11, I don't think I'm going to sell my iMac 27' i7 anytime soon!
I agree.
My 27" iMac is the single most important computer that we own... even if it is not the most highly used. The biggest reasons are:
- It contains the "original" of every piece of information that we own
- Our data would not fit on any laptop drive
- Everything on our laptops (Me: 11.6" MBA; Wife: 13.3" MBA) is synced to the iMac with either Dropbox or Mobile Me
- The iMac is backed up twice (TM and Crashplan+) so 100% of our data is safe
- There are many things where the 27" screen is extremely valuable (only if items 1-4 didn't exist... than a ACD would fill this need)
We think that the combination of an iMac and a pair of MBAs is perfect for us. Of all the devices we own, the iPad is used the least... but there are some usages for which that is the best device as well.
/Jim
Got an iMac 27" Core i5 and a MBA 13". Both are used daily. Couldn't sell my iMac... need the quad core chip for video rendering and the larger display is there for watching movies... and generally when im tired and i know a bigger screen would get the job done better (bigger the better, right?) - the iMac it is.
I don't know.. Personally I feel the exact opposite. I have a 21.5 inch iMac and I just got the 13" Air and the only device I'm planning on parting with is my iPad. I think it works nice to have a home base where I can keep all my big externals attached for my Movies, Pics, Music and the bigger screen. Plus, I use it for Plex in my living room. I know the iPad isn't the same thing but the Air reminds me how much I missed having a full OS X laptop.
On a side note if I didn't get the steal price on the Air that I did I was gonna wait for the new 13 inch pro refresh. And I still might turn around and sell this if the new Pros are crazy innovative or something. But only if they are lighter, I love the Airs lightness for crazy portability.
On a side note if I didn't get the steal price on the Air that I did I was gonna wait for the new 13 inch pro refresh. And I still might turn around and sell this if the new Pros are crazy innovative or something. But only if they are lighter, I love the Airs lightness for crazy portability.
This isn't true anymore. The only laptop components left I believe are the Graphics Cards (which are more powerful than the Macbook Pro's), and maybe the RAM.
The processor and hard drive are desktop class.
Me too. When I'm at home, I'm almost always on my iMac. The MBA is with me when I'm out of the house.
Why not keep both? Considering you have spent nearly 3 or 4k on computers, I"m going to guess money is not the leading factor when deciding this issue. I keep a desktop machine for things like video encoding, ripping, backups, file server etc.. It's the hub that all my other gadgets revolve around. The MBA (2010) is a great machine, but as others have stated the C2D will show it's weakness if you find yourself trying to do anything CPU intensive. It's a great everyday use machine, but still nice to have a backup.
My Mac Mini is only designed to do 3 things:
Browse Web.
Manage/Download Large Data files that I don't want bogged on my MBA.
PLEX MEDIA.
This is why my monitor and my tv are next to each other with my mini supplying displays for both. I have the MBA on the couch and it's what I take to bed.
Browse Web.
Manage/Download Large Data files that I don't want bogged on my MBA.
PLEX MEDIA.
This is why my monitor and my tv are next to each other with my mini supplying displays for both. I have the MBA on the couch and it's what I take to bed.
When I'm home, I'm using my iMac i7 all the time. Once a day I update my MBA 11's applications that need daily updates. (From my iMac and or Mobile me.)
I shut the MBA down after that and will only use it when I'm on a trip or leave the house needing a notebook.
I have watched a couple of movies on the MBA and had a couple of Skype vidio sessions with the MBA just to check them out! (Worked just great with both Hulu and Netflick.)
I shut the MBA down after that and will only use it when I'm on a trip or leave the house needing a notebook.
I have watched a couple of movies on the MBA and had a couple of Skype vidio sessions with the MBA just to check them out! (Worked just great with both Hulu and Netflick.)
Both of which can be plugged into a MBA really
I have a Samsung 2048x1156 screen and a keyboard/mouse/tablet combo I routinely plug into my MBA when at home.I haven't needed a "desktop" in years thanks to USB and VGA/DVI/DP outputs on laptops. In fact, my last desktop was a Pentium 2 333 mhz, which I upgraded to a Compaq laptop around 2004. The Pentium 2 is still serving active duty as a server :
Code:
$ dmesg | grep CPU
CPU: Pentium II/Pentium II Xeon/Celeron (334.09-MHz 686-class CPU)It's not like a DNS cache/squid proxy/rails web dev/nagios box requires anything more. I even run ZFS on it even though it lacks the required 512 MB of RAM by FreeBSD's implementation.
That Pentium 2 is something I bought during my hardcore gamer years, in 1998 or so, the first Deschutes Pentium 2 on the market. With a Voodoo 2 card it served me until I got tired of PC gaming and then was my Linux desktop which led me to a career as a Unix sysadmin until I decided I'd rather just have a laptop than a SSH'able machine.
Really, most people grossly overestimate their computing needs. These days my machine is used to code (ruby, obj-c, C99, Perl) and browse the web. I play a game or two on it (currently battling a Civ4 addiction, damn you Steam 6.99$ Civ 4!)
Both of which can be plugged into a MBA really
That's true but I can avoid the cable show
The iMac is mainly used as media center and server, it's connected to my TV so I use it to watch TV shows and stuff. Nothing is better than just lie on bed, wake up the iMac with remote, VNC to the iMac from MBA to launch Plex and enjoy. I know, this sounds lazy