MacBook Air

I think the choice should consider:

- How much built-in storage does she actually need for pics? Pros go bigger than Air.

- How important is video-editing? With HD video editing, the rule is always faster-is-better! Pros are more powerful - or can be configured to be so. Also if she wants to store video in the same manner as pics - she's gonna need a lot of hard drive space. 

Don all of those requirements are met by either choice.

To my way of thinking, the Macbook Air is really optimized for those who need the very light weight and portability.  The lack of an internal optical disk drive, and the solid-state 'hard drive', allows the Air to be thinner and lighter, but somewhat less useful to many.  I think that the better value is the entry-level 13 inch Macbook Pro.  She simply does not need the features that make the Air so thin and light and also less useful.

A Macbook air will pretty much do  do all the facebook, skype,word, PSelements etc, but I'm not sure what you mean by photos needing to be "recoverable". Obviously, it does not have a built-in CD/DVD drive and fairly limited hard-drive space (but which can still hold an absolute shed-load of photos - but perhaps not so much video). Wireless connection to a home network with storage overcomes a lot of that limitation. A TimeCapsule is perhaps the easiest, but not cheapest nor most powerful solution here (while she is at home, anyway). Another storage solution is to keep her photos "in the cloud" on Flickr or some-such.

A 13" Macbook Pro is a great machine and adds a much larger hard-drive and more power. If she is serious about photo-editing, she really needs to step up to the 15" model, though. Here she spec a hi-res screen which will be much more suitable for this sort of work. You're way out of your $1k price range now, though.

Edit: I just re-read your post and noticed you talked about video-editing. This means at least a Macbook Pro. The Air just won't cut it.

I have a slew of Macs for work. The Air is fantastic if portability is a concern and sits nicely and lightly in the lap. The new models work surprising well with the i5 processors and SSD speed, but as others have said there's no CD/DVD drive, video editing is demanding, storage is limited (and some people find storing iMovie files on external drives a nightmare). The Airs also have better screens until you get to the 15" MBP.

Overall, I think I'd agree with others unless the portability is an issue, and go for either the 15" MBP if she's going to be video editing for any length of time  or - even better value for money - the iMac, if portability really is a red herring. It's much more comfortable for extended work.

Thanks for all the responcses - they are most useful.

I have put (what I think are) her desired features into (what I think are) her order of priorities (getting explicit priorities is proving difficult and they do seem to keep changing........) :-

• must have video link-up with middle daughter who lives in Canada and runs Skype on a Dell
• must be small and light and easily transportable to/from Canada and work both here and over there
• must store all her photos so as to be recoverable in a flash without fiddley cables/external drives. At present these occupy about 20Gb of ThinkPad hard drive and are backed up on an Iomega 320Gb external hard drive. No doubt they will grow in size but I can't see her ever filling 320Gb. She has a small Nikon compact digital camera - nothing special but it does take nice pictures.
• must work with Facebook
• must be wirelessly connected to the internet (her ThinkPad is)
• she hasn't mentioned storing music files, but these would probably be limited in number and density
• no doubt must be able to run Word (but she doesn't use Excel/Access/Power-point etc)
• might be handy if it could run Photoshop Elements or other picture manipulation software - but not essential
• might be handy if it could run Photoshop Premiere or other home video software - but not essential

I suggested she avoid AMD and other unusual processers and stick with Intel  i5 or similar. This seemed to rule out a whole host of small and light machines by Acer, Samsung, and a few others at around the £300 mark and saw the meteoric jump to the Macs at £1k. I think i should have kept quiet !!

Cheers

Don

The Macs are much better built than the others.

Frankly, I'd suggest she goes to a shop and plays with them, sees how she feels about the weight/screen size/built in disc options. All of the Airs and MBPs come with iPhoto and iMovie, which will do similar things to Elements and Premiere. And they will all do the things you list. The thin lid on the Airs means the built-in camera has a slightly lower resolution for Skype video . If you want you can call me on Skype to see the difference in quality that her daughter would perceive (or not notice as the case may be).

One can think oneself silly about this, but when you lay your hands on things and aplay around, close them up, pick them etc. at one's e;isure it all becomes much clearer.

Do you have an Apple Store nearby?

I personally think that the Macbook Air would not impose any limitation on video editing, plus SSD offers a big boost in performance. I would recommend you playing around with it and comparing it with a Macbook Pro. In the US, you can return it within 2 weeks if you are not happy with it.

The downside of the MBA is that the disk space and no DVD drive. But 256 GB SSD is probably big enough unless you store a lot of moves, pictures, etc.

Don, on the basis of your latest post I gather your wife is more of a "basic" user when it comes to photo/video-usage? For this reason I would say the Air could be an option - if spec'd to the max size SSD at 256 GB. Though I maintain that beyond the most basic usage - its not a good choice for video-editing. (The screen size is also an issue for video/picture-editing, but I suspect is not a problem in this case?) 

Beyond these issues, both the Pro and Air checks all your requirements. Note in particular that the size-difference may or may not be minuscule - you're best off finding a retailer where you can touch and feel. Also note that the Air only has wireless by default. Wired ethernet requires an extra adapter.

Finally you can't compare Acers and any other computer around the 300 mark with a Mac at +1K. They may look superficially similar on specs, but the quality is totally different. However there are lots of other brands that make comparable (in quality) computers - for instance a Sony Vaio or a Thinkpad in the +1K region are very well built. The problem is that there are so many different models/brands/series that its hard to navigate. Just wanted to mention this as you're by no means bound to Mac if you want quality  

Thanks for all the advice, it really is helpful.

A new Apple store opened in Newbury recently. II haven't had time to visit it yet but Mrs D did pop in a few days ago. We also have John Lewis in Reading. So getting to touch and feel shouldn't be a big issue.

i had a quick look at a range of laptops a few days back and agree that the Macs feel as if they are in a different league to the Acers and Samsungs etc. We already have an IBM ThinkPad but I am not convinced that the Lenovo ThinkPads are of similar quality. Most of the Dells, ThinkPads, Vaios and HPs etc seem rather large and heavy compared to the 11", 13" and even 15" Macs.

At the moment I am leaning towards suggesting the 13" MacBook Air or 13" Macbook Pro depending on which she "feels" most happy with. I might be able to pesuade her to accept external hard drives if she prefers the MacBook Air, especially if she leans towards an 11" model. Can anybody advise (roughly) how much "useful" storage would be available on a 125GB Flash drive after allowing for the operating system and typical programmes such as Office ?

Mike, many thanks for your offer, but at present we don't have Skype - this is one of the reasons Mrs D is looking to replace her ThinkPad, although there are other reasons. I appreciate I could fit a camera and skype to the ThinkPad, but i'm afraid the ThinkPad is history for Mrs D, but a good hand-me-down for me !!

Thanks again for all the advice

Cheers

Don

I have a Macbook Pro 17" and I replaced the DVD drive with a 128 GB ssd. This drive is used as a boot drive + all kinds of apps and I can safely say it would not exceed 10 GB.

BTW, I just could not believe my eyes with the performance improved by the SSD drive, everything just flies, I am stumped.

The Mac - any variant will come with a Photo editing and storage application, it may be worth moving over to Apple Pages for word processing  - it will read Word files it cost £13.99 and is downloadable fro the builtin Ap Store.

Apart from Skype (which is downloadable from the Skype website) the Mac will come with a video chat product called iChat for chatting to other Mac users.

The builtin software will come with easy access to the iCloud a new Apple cloud feature for sharing files and pictures etc etc.

Use the Apple shop Genius to get a head start on finding your way around Mac OSX and then enjoy.

For quite a bit of the wish list I'm finding that an iPad does well - better in many cases than a desktop, laptop, netbook.

As an addition to a 'proper' computer it works very well - not so with Word, advanced photo and video editing.

For Facebook, Skype, PDF reading, viewing photos and much more it makes sense.

In addition, as you can see, it will not connect to the Naim Forum.

And let's not forget the newly launched Toshiba Ultrabook Z830.

Regards,

Willy.

I had the same dilemma 9 months ago. The Air does look tempting, just on the looks alone, but I came to my senses and got the Pro 13". It's perfect and faultless.

The Air is just for pure portability and even then, when you stick it in a case (which you most likely will), they end up more or less the same size.

My take on this is entirely the reverse...

I bought the little 11" Air just for writing fiction in Scrivener and not for work at all, believing it wouldn't be up to the job either processor-wise or in terms of screen size. I now use it for everything while away. You can stuff it in anything without worrying about the screen (as you would with an iPad) and for me the difference in weight and bulk vs. the MBP is significant. I take it everywhere without a 2nd thought. I like it much more than I expected to. And what others have said about the SSD is also very true. Considering the processor, it's performance is delightfully surprising.

Ahh, the 11" Air is a different story, as that's very small (too small for me to use properly). The hard drive on a Macbook Pro is so quick I don't notice it being accessed. Most of the computer work uses ram anyway.

Has anyone mentioned 'The Cloud' yet as a possible answer to the storage / backup of photos / music?

Everything back in a snap, and no real on board / hard drive / sticks etc needed to do so.

I think iCloud has been mentioned, but explaining what it actually does is quite elaborate - so its kind of a topic on its own. At first sight it doesn't look like something Mrs. D would need!?

It isn't simply an online bin where you can automatically drop all your data - its more like a grand central station for each Apple user enabling hem to sync some!!! of our data to all devices.

PS Of course there are hacks around many of the "limitations"...

PSS Yes, there are other cloud services - the most straight-forward is perhaps Dropbox. But they all suffer from (relatively low c.f. 20GB) storage caps and they are not free.

Btw. Don, I agree with those who recommend using the Mac native programs: Pages (word processing), Numbers (spreadsheet), iMovie (video), iTunes (music...), iPhoto (pictures), iChat (instant messaging). If used, they're very well integrated with the entire Apple ecosystem.

But. Beware that there is a switchover overhead (from Windows). Yes - Pages reads Words docs, but not always without issues. On the other hand - if she chooses to purchase Word (for Mac), she will not be able to use e.g. iCloud for her docs (unless hacks are applied). 

iPhoto may be able to import whatever organizing-strategies Mrs. D i currently using, but again maybe with some issues. 

I'm not saying these things are unsolvable or even difficult to sort out. But I think its important that they're accounted for.

Thanks for all the advice over the past couple of days. Its really helped.

Mrs D seems to be leaning towards a 13" MacBook Pro with a 500Gb hard drive (as opposed to a 126Gb solid state drive). her options have probably run through iPad2, 11" or 13" MacBook Air and 13" MacBook Pro. not just once, but several times !!

I'll wait a few days to see whether ideas settle down and give her more time to visit the new Apple store again, in Newbury.

Cheers

Don

Get her an iPad. Seriously. The other stuff that doesn't work on the iPad, she can do on the home PC, if you have one.

The growth potential of the iPad is much lower than any variant of a Macbook.

It might be initially convenient to show off pictures of the rug rats and their offspring but beyond that you are hitting limitations.

Use Samsung Galaxy 10.1 instead - Naim forum works like a charm on it

I too had an iPad before and got rid of it after 2 months.

Bobby

iRony ?

Unfortunately your recommendation is wasted on me as I can't see it.