I bought the 11" MBA. Got a great price.
GAve it to wife for Mother's Day. She loves it. I think it is pretty awesome too.
However, in between purchase and gift giving, I found a great deal on the 13" MBP as well and bought that too.
Today it arrived and now its judgement day.
Part of me says swap her 11" out for the 13". For obvious reasons. More storage being perhaps #1. Secondary is cpu power and memory and battery and screen size and user swappable hd (ssd in the future) as well as thunderbolt.
At the same time the 11" MBA is entirely cute and in my mind so easy to move around and get on the internet with that I'm afraid wife will reject the swap even if she says "whatever" when I mentioned the differences. AT the same time maybe overplaying the 13" size and weight. She isn't going to be lugging it around. It's a house 'puter that will get used in bed or on couch or on dresser while she is getting ready in the morning.
She really doesn't understand either direction imo. And just would rather not have this sort of discussion.
But of course this site loves these discussions right?
Anyway I figure I lose either way.
If I keep the 11" then down the road my wife will find out some Photo or video operation or creative cpu demanding task is quite slow. OR she will find out that she no storage left for anything within a year because there is only 15gb left right now. And little to no home movies on the MBA.
If I swap out the 13" the whole gift giving thing is a bit spoiled and right away she'll notice the 13" feels a bit like a monster compared to the 11". It is no where near as spry.
So I'm torn.
I was leaning towards the 13" lately because at roughly the same time I sold my iMac. It sold to my surprise because I had it listed towards the high-end of what I thought I could get for it.
So now without that imac to hold all my content I'm leaning back to the 13" MBP just in case i don't buy another imac. And I might not buy another imac or Mac because I also built myself a cheap pc that is quite powerful. And Win7 has many positives.
But at the same time wife loves iPhoto and all our movie footage was in iMovie. Pain to switch programs and the interface of iPhoto has no equal amongst Picasa or Windows Live Gallery etc from what I've seen.
I was thinking external hard drive to AEBS to cure the MBA storage issues. I happen to have a few external hard drives laying around so that's no problem. I could put photos and movies on there even iTunes content although that sit fine on the windows pc.
But then there's no easy (hands-off) way to back that up. I would have to put 2 externals on there. and then copy one to the other I guess once in awhile. Maybe get a 3rd party program so it only copies the stuff that has been changed. Probably one that does that with 2 identical 3rd party drives right? Would a 3rd party program also back up my MBA's drive to these AEBS-mounted drives? Otherwise would need 3 external drives. One for TM backups directly connected. One of AEBS data. One to back up AEBS data.
I haven't messed with that scenario though. Skeptical about the responsiveness of iPhoto with such a library.
Also for ATV then you need to have MBA on. (although that's better than having my ungainly windows pc power sucker on.) BE so nice if Apple made an iTunes network storage device. (of course the price would be prohibitive and then might as well just get a Mini.)
So I guess I'm leaning towards the 13" MBP unless you think the AEBS-networked drive scenario combined with the MBA 11" is doable with a good 3rd party back up program.
GAve it to wife for Mother's Day. She loves it. I think it is pretty awesome too.
However, in between purchase and gift giving, I found a great deal on the 13" MBP as well and bought that too.
Today it arrived and now its judgement day.
Part of me says swap her 11" out for the 13". For obvious reasons. More storage being perhaps #1. Secondary is cpu power and memory and battery and screen size and user swappable hd (ssd in the future) as well as thunderbolt.
At the same time the 11" MBA is entirely cute and in my mind so easy to move around and get on the internet with that I'm afraid wife will reject the swap even if she says "whatever" when I mentioned the differences. AT the same time maybe overplaying the 13" size and weight. She isn't going to be lugging it around. It's a house 'puter that will get used in bed or on couch or on dresser while she is getting ready in the morning.
She really doesn't understand either direction imo. And just would rather not have this sort of discussion.
But of course this site loves these discussions right?
Anyway I figure I lose either way.
If I keep the 11" then down the road my wife will find out some Photo or video operation or creative cpu demanding task is quite slow. OR she will find out that she no storage left for anything within a year because there is only 15gb left right now. And little to no home movies on the MBA.
If I swap out the 13" the whole gift giving thing is a bit spoiled and right away she'll notice the 13" feels a bit like a monster compared to the 11". It is no where near as spry.
So I'm torn.
I was leaning towards the 13" lately because at roughly the same time I sold my iMac. It sold to my surprise because I had it listed towards the high-end of what I thought I could get for it.
So now without that imac to hold all my content I'm leaning back to the 13" MBP just in case i don't buy another imac. And I might not buy another imac or Mac because I also built myself a cheap pc that is quite powerful. And Win7 has many positives.
But at the same time wife loves iPhoto and all our movie footage was in iMovie. Pain to switch programs and the interface of iPhoto has no equal amongst Picasa or Windows Live Gallery etc from what I've seen.
I was thinking external hard drive to AEBS to cure the MBA storage issues. I happen to have a few external hard drives laying around so that's no problem. I could put photos and movies on there even iTunes content although that sit fine on the windows pc.
But then there's no easy (hands-off) way to back that up. I would have to put 2 externals on there. and then copy one to the other I guess once in awhile. Maybe get a 3rd party program so it only copies the stuff that has been changed. Probably one that does that with 2 identical 3rd party drives right? Would a 3rd party program also back up my MBA's drive to these AEBS-mounted drives? Otherwise would need 3 external drives. One for TM backups directly connected. One of AEBS data. One to back up AEBS data.
I haven't messed with that scenario though. Skeptical about the responsiveness of iPhoto with such a library.
Also for ATV then you need to have MBA on. (although that's better than having my ungainly windows pc power sucker on.) BE so nice if Apple made an iTunes network storage device. (of course the price would be prohibitive and then might as well just get a Mini.)
So I guess I'm leaning towards the 13" MBP unless you think the AEBS-networked drive scenario combined with the MBA 11" is doable with a good 3rd party back up program.
