2015 rMB (Retina Macbook)

[freitz]

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Just figured I would throw this up on the forums.

 

I have a monster of a machine at home for editing, gaming, workstation... its a dream and a PC. On the road I use a 2011 macbook air 11"; unfortunately it is starting to show its age. Runs hot, battery lasts the better part of an hour, 2gb of ram leaves little to be desired for lightroom and photoshop. I can't run more than 5 Chrome windows, its time for this to hit the shelf and for me to move onto something else.

 

I need portability, I tried the surface pro 3 for 2 days and I couldn't get into it. Found it uncomfortable on my lap after about an hour and more awkward. I really wanted to want it, I have a PC at home and love the performance for everything, it crushes a maxed out Mac Pro; would be nice to have seamless operating systems. However I do not mind using two different ones it is easy to transfer files. Even though slower I found myself coming back to the Air 11" because it was comfortable. The kick stand on the surface is nice but I general work with it on my lap when traveling, at the beach house, or just sitting on the couch at home when I don't feel the need to be in the office. 

 

I wanted to reach out an see if anyone is using the new Macbook for when on the road? I travel for fun and for work often, my work computer is a monster of dell machine, I don't use it unless I have to and typically avoid taking it when traveling if I don't need to be on a VPN. Plus for security reasons we cannot install personal applications on it, so lightroom and such is out.

 

Please feel free to share you experience or suggestions.

[Jeff S]

Lots of related discussion (search things like 'best laptop for travel' etc)….like this…   http://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/227174-managing-images-from-an-m240-while-travelling/

 

Bottom line, lots of different views, with many folks satisfied using a Macbook Pro or Air.

 

Jeff

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[dpitt]

You seem to keep your laptop pretty long.

I have been using PC for work and Macbook for home since 1995.

Since 2000 or so, I never bought a new Mac. This reduces cost considerably.

e.g. I am now using a Macbook Pro 17" (2009) that I bought when it was 1 year old for half the new price.

Typically Macbooks have a usable life of about 6 years for me which is about double of the usable life of my Dell monster at work.

With a recent upgrade to SSD drive, I hope to keep using my 17" for one more year.

 

Never regretted this strategy…and invested the money I saved in Leica gear

[freitz]

You seem to keep your laptop pretty long.

I have been using PC for work and Macbook for home since 1995.

Since 2000 or so, I never bought a new Mac. This reduces cost considerably.

e.g. I am now using a Macbook Pro 17" (2009) that I bought when it was 1 year old for half the new price.

Typically Macbooks have a usable life of about 6 years for me which is about double of the usable life of my Dell monster at work.

With a recent upgrade to SSD drive, I hope to keep using my 17" for one more year.

 

Never regretted this strategy…and invested the money I saved in Leica gear

I only kept this 11" so long because I never really traveled as much as I am now so i always waited to use lightroom at home. Don't get me wrong lightroom runs on this thing just with 2gb of ram it struggles.

 

 

Lots of related discussion (search things like 'best laptop for travel' etc)….like this…   http://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/227174-managing-images-from-an-m240-while-travelling/

 

Bottom line, lots of different views, with many folks satisfied using a Macbook Pro or Air.

 

Jeff

 

Thanks Jeff! Used the pro in the past not a bad mobile machine at all; I have the 11" air now from 2011. Was a good machine when I accepted its limitations.

[Dougg]

It seems the trend with new Macs is to solder-in all the formerly upgradeable parts and remove easy access to the innards. Same philosophy as the original 128k Mac of 1984 which was deliberately made hard to get into. So the best move now with a new Mac, I think, is to max it out with a built-to-order from the get-go.

 

My laptop is a early-2011 refurb MacBook Pro 13" with 8Gb RAM that is expandable to 16. Until the other day it had a 512Gb hard drive, but I just put in a 1Tb SSD, nice and quick! It uses OS X Yosemite, and Lightroom 6 runs great.

 

Doug

[menos I M6]

I have generally two strategies when buying a new portable computer:

 

1.) buy a newly introduced model (about 6 month after introduction and no earlier, monitoring forums closely about hard ware issues), max it completely out (fastest CPU, largest RAM if not upgradable, largest SSD, if not upgradable, …

 

Then - keep this thing until it dies.

 

2.) buy a slightly older model where third party suppliers offer upgrades (my former 15" MBP had RAM and SSD upgrades from OWC which would have cost almost double if I would have ordered them with Apple at the time).

 

Keep this computer just before Apple Care expires, have any issue repaired under warranty, strip the computer of it's upgrades and resell all items. Upgrade to the next machine.

 

I am now still on my first gen 15" Retina MBP and wouldn't want anything less powerful for the road (although a 13" sounds lighter the 15" simply gets more work done as of it's discreet GPU, allowing for 3D work the 13" machines and MBAs are not cut out for.

 

If you can, I would look into streamlining all machines towards Apple products - working on the road AND at home on OS X is so much easier than to futz with Windows related problems. Current iMacs and of course the MacPro are great machines and I would not want to go back to all the misery I still remember so clearly form Windows PCs (although I still have to spend half that misery with my Bootcamp Windows installs as some software simply runs only on Windows).