Greetings all from a new poster who just bought the MBA.
I have been running my business on a 12" powerbook for years and just grabbed this new Mac as soon as it appeared in the Apple store. I thought I would share a word or two about my use.
First off, I guess you would say I am not a power user as defined by many of you on this board. I don't own photoshop, play games, make DVD movies, or compose music on my machine. I do use it for exclusively business uses and email. The power of the new MBA is great...heck, my old PB12 worked OK but needed more memory and a bigger hard drive.
I have two jobs: I am a college professor part-time at a major state university and head of a small security/investigative/counterterrorism consulting company. We do work for the government (a bit) and for large private companies (a lot). The college job is pretty much what you would expect: lots of powerpoint, word, excel work. I am also a heavy user of Aquaminds fantastic Notetaker program.
The consulting job uses all the above tools plus Tinderbox (I use it to track projects, take notes, organize my life, keep clients straight, etc.) I also use Scrivener for writing materials for clients as well as working on books I am writing. Omni Graffle is the last item on my must list and is used to make presentations since I am totally devoid of artistic ability.
I put all my software on the MBA and was delighted to see that I still had over 55GB of open space on the machine. That is worlds for me. (I keep confidential files on on four different 4GB jump drives. In my business life, I have to work with info that belongs to others and I try my best to keep it confidential.)
Now that the MBA is my primary business machine, I will be carrying it daily between my three offices, using it at home and in the car as well, and generally putting it through its paces. Battery charges will be a daily occurrence as I have to have the thing fully charged when I walk out the door in the morning. I'll be lugging it around the USA and overseas as well.
Yes, I did pick up a USB hub since I need to put both a printer and one of the jump drives on at the same time.
Anyway, my first impressions are that this the machine of my dreams. I had previously a Thinkpad 240 that weighed about the same and that I beat up badly over the years. Replaced that with a Sony that had multiple hard drive failures, and then moved to Macs and the 12" PB. I've been waiting a long time for the successor to that machine and this MBA appears to be it.
I have been running my business on a 12" powerbook for years and just grabbed this new Mac as soon as it appeared in the Apple store. I thought I would share a word or two about my use.
First off, I guess you would say I am not a power user as defined by many of you on this board. I don't own photoshop, play games, make DVD movies, or compose music on my machine. I do use it for exclusively business uses and email. The power of the new MBA is great...heck, my old PB12 worked OK but needed more memory and a bigger hard drive.
I have two jobs: I am a college professor part-time at a major state university and head of a small security/investigative/counterterrorism consulting company. We do work for the government (a bit) and for large private companies (a lot). The college job is pretty much what you would expect: lots of powerpoint, word, excel work. I am also a heavy user of Aquaminds fantastic Notetaker program.
The consulting job uses all the above tools plus Tinderbox (I use it to track projects, take notes, organize my life, keep clients straight, etc.) I also use Scrivener for writing materials for clients as well as working on books I am writing. Omni Graffle is the last item on my must list and is used to make presentations since I am totally devoid of artistic ability.
I put all my software on the MBA and was delighted to see that I still had over 55GB of open space on the machine. That is worlds for me. (I keep confidential files on on four different 4GB jump drives. In my business life, I have to work with info that belongs to others and I try my best to keep it confidential.)
Now that the MBA is my primary business machine, I will be carrying it daily between my three offices, using it at home and in the car as well, and generally putting it through its paces. Battery charges will be a daily occurrence as I have to have the thing fully charged when I walk out the door in the morning. I'll be lugging it around the USA and overseas as well.
Yes, I did pick up a USB hub since I need to put both a printer and one of the jump drives on at the same time.
Anyway, my first impressions are that this the machine of my dreams. I had previously a Thinkpad 240 that weighed about the same and that I beat up badly over the years. Replaced that with a Sony that had multiple hard drive failures, and then moved to Macs and the 12" PB. I've been waiting a long time for the successor to that machine and this MBA appears to be it.
