[RXrenesis8]

The 15" macbook pro actually offers 1680x1050 now.

The backlit keyboard is VERY useful.

What is an ultrabook? They sound... ultra.

[boriscleto]

What is an ultrabook? They sound... ultra.

An Ultrabook is just a copy of the MacBook Air. Intel drew up a spec and trademarked it.

Ultrabook - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[65535]

I have an 11" macbook air, with the processor upgrade. Great machine. The ultrabooks cannot compare.

Wifi was a bit weird when I got it but it has been flawless for some 3 weeks now. Must have been some OS update

[RXrenesis8]

A couple of things are still broken in Lion, unless you're an early adopter I'd always advise waiting until the OS you want has it's first major update (Whatever.0 --> Whatever.1)

[boriscleto]

A couple of things are still broken in Lion, unless you're an early adopter I'd always advise waiting until the OS you want has it's first major update (Whatever.0 --> Whatever.1)

Lion is at 10.7.1 and will be going to 10.7.2 in a week or two. There has also been a security update.

[rtpguy]

Oooh, I hated OS9 and predecessors ( not more than windows, though )... I've always been a *nix fan, and I jumped ship when OSX became "prime time ready". *nix always just worked the way my mind works, and it made me crazy that there weren't *nix variants of ... Oh, Photoshop, Cubase, Logic, Lightwave, etc. All the 'creative' tools I needed. I switched back and forth between windows and linux and *bsd until OSX. Now I have a single windows box that I run Fruity Loops on, a Windows laptop provided by my employer, and the rest are linux and mac boxen. (I'm a systems engineer and run a fairly complex network here at home for testing and development).

This. Except add in a few Sun SPARC workstations along the way, converting nearly every company given workstation or laptop to Linux dual boot, many bouts with WINE and VMWare 1.0 beta..

I couldn't stand MacOS prior to OSX - it served a purpose for creatives, but not so much for me at the time as a developer and sysadmin.
After a good run with Gentoo, and hoping they'd learn from bsd to stop breaking portage every other day, often in pretty amazingly bad ways, I decided to give OSX (Tiger) a try, and picked up a used dual G4. It was 'almost there' but not quite - more things just worked without too much effort, which was becoming important - I had hundreds of *nix servers, but my workstation/laptop really needed to just work to let me get my job(s) done. I bit the bullet when the first core 2 duo macbook pro came out, dual booted it with linux, and have been reasonably happy since, with much thanks to macports.

[rtpguy]

Anybody have experience with the latest Macbook Air (w/ Thunderbolt)? I'm looking at either getting one of these or one of the new Ultrabooks coming in Nov (Asus, Toshiba, Acer). So far I'm liking the Mac more because it has a higher resolution display (1440x900 vs. 1366x768 on most laptops) and backlit keyboard. I wanted to mainly use it for tethered shooting during the occasional location shoots. I've seen issues with the wifi dropping, so I was wondering what's been everyone else's experience (likes or dislikes).

I use a mb pro as my primary combination workstation/laptop for work and personal. The current quad core i7 systems (iMacs, MB Pros) are quite nice.
wifi dropping seemed to be an early Lion problem, and possibly an initial release issue on the latest macbook/pros.
I don't believe that you can't find a better system for less, but it does depend where in the macbook release cycle you are, and exactly what features you want/need.
The airs are nice, but overall - not for me due to the lack of upgrade path and limited (and overpriced) RAM, GPU, etc.

I wouldn't recommend anyone buying the low end 11 inch Air - 2GB of RAM for osx is just barely minimum for email, browser, doc editing. 4GB if you plan on doing much of any type of image editing and normal usage, but then you're also limited to the awful Intel integrated graphics.

What camera will you be using for tethering? And do you plan on doing any processing on it, or just to collect images, and maybe sort through and delete the non-keepers? I'd bet it could do ok for some Lightroom duties, as long as you have a more powerful system at home/office if intending to do a lot of significant editing. If you are really stuck on the Air instead of a Pro, I'd wait and see what the ultrabooks are offering in the way of upgradeable or RAM and storage limitations - I don't think anyone's finalized their offerings as of yet?

Or, if you are one of those that will upgrade/replace the system on a yearly basis, decide between the Airs or a Pro, and just get what seems best with 4GB of RAM or more, and whatever is 'enough' storage for your use..

[boriscleto]

What camera will you be using for tethering? ..

It's pretty easy to narrow this down since Pentax hasn't supported tethering since the K20D.

[mysticcowboy]

Anybody have experience with the latest Macbook Air (w/ Thunderbolt)? I'm looking at either getting one of these or one of the new Ultrabooks coming in Nov (Asus, Toshiba, Acer). So far I'm liking the Mac more because it has a higher resolution display (1440x900 vs. 1366x768 on most laptops) and backlit keyboard. I wanted to mainly use it for tethered shooting during the occasional location shoots. I've seen issues with the wifi dropping, so I was wondering what's been everyone else's experience (likes or dislikes).

Love the MacBook Air, the 13". It's beautiful, light, fast enough and has a much better display than most Windows notebooks. Thunderbolt may someday be great. As of right now, USB 3 and Windows is the fastest option for external photo libraries. Last week, there there was one external hard drive announced by LeCie (not yet out) that uses Thunderbolt. Right now, I'm running LR off a Firewire 800 external drive, with another daisy chained for backup. The firewire adds to the price of each HD and isn't as fast as USB 3.

The problem with ultrabooks is that Apple tied up low power processors so thoroughly that other manufacturers are having to charge more than Apple for equivalent equipment + a Windows license. Intel need to drop the price on processors before Apple's price advantage goes away. The advantage of ultrabooks is that external add ons are, and will continue to be much cheaper.

[ducdao]

Lion is at 10.7.1 and will be going to 10.7.2 in a week or two. There has also been a security update.

I have a Macbook pro 15" (mid-2007), one of the RAM connectors is not working so I can only only install one stick and I maxed it with a 2G stick. Prior the upgrade to Lion, the speed was acceptable most of the time if with Lightroom and PS5, but now it's noticeably slower.

So my suggestion is only upgrade to Lion if you have 4G+ of RAM. I hope future updates will help improve the speed but I don't think it's going to happen...

[boriscleto]

I have a Macbook pro 15" (mid-2007), one of the RAM connectors is not working so I can only only install one stick and I maxed it with a 2G stick. Prior the upgrade to Lion, the speed was acceptable most of the time if with Lightroom and PS5, but now it's noticeably slower.

So my suggestion is only upgrade to Lion if you have 4G+ of RAM. I hope future updates will help improve the speed but I don't think it's going to happen...

If you have the 2007 MacBook Pro with the GeForce 8600M you can install a 4GB DIMM even though Apple says you can only install 2GB DIMMs. Apple says only install 2GB DIMMs because you are supposed to install them in matched pairs for interleaving and the firmware can only address 6GB.

[ducdao]

If you have the 2007 MacBook Pro with the GeForce 8600M you can install a 4GB DIMM even though Apple says you can only install 2GB DIMMs. Apple says only install 2GB DIMMs because you are supposed to install them in matched pairs for interleaving and the firmware can only address 6GB.

My MBP does accept 4G, the only problem is one of my RAM slot is not working anymore so I can not install 2 sticks of RAM. It used to work with 4G before.

[boriscleto]

My MBP does accept 4G, the only problem is one of my RAM slot is not working anymore so I can not install 2 sticks of RAM. It used to work with 4G before.

You can install 1 4GB DIMM instead of 2 2GB DIMMs. The 2007 MBP could address up to 6GB of RAM (1 4GB, 1 2GB) without interleaving.

[ducdao]

You can install 1 4GB DIMM instead of 2 2GB DIMMs. The 2007 MBP could address up to 6GB of RAM (1 4GB, 1 2GB) without interleaving.

Oh I see what you mean. I read too fast. Sounds like a good thing to try considering RAM price is very low these days.

Thanks for the recommendation!

[einstrigger]

What camera will you be using for tethering? And do you plan on doing any processing on it, or just to collect images, and maybe sort through and delete the non-keepers? I'd bet it could do ok for some Lightroom duties, as long as you have a more powerful system at home/office if intending to do a lot of significant editing. If you are really stuck on the Air instead of a Pro, I'd wait and see what the ultrabooks are offering in the way of upgradeable or RAM and storage limitations - I don't think anyone's finalized their offerings as of yet?

I'd be tethering a Nikon D7000 for on location shoots (indoors of course). And no, all post processing would be relegated to my desktop at home (Intel Core i5 2500k, 8GBs ram, 120GB SSD). Like you mentioned, it would be more for sorting through keepers/non-keepers. Maybe the occasional editing, if I'm bored in a hotel room, so I'm likely to install Photoshop CS5 or Lightroom.

I was also interested in the 13" Macbook Pro, but didn't like the small screen resolution (1280 by 800). The 15" models are above my budget, so it comes down to either the 13" Air or Pro. I like the upgradability of the Pro (more RAM, bigger HDD) and the core I7 CPU, but like I said I hate the screen resolution. As for the Air, I like the resolutions at 1440x900 and the SSD drive, but don't like the fixed ram at 4GB. Performance wise, would I notice a big difference between the top end 13" Pro vs. the 13" Air?

Macbook Pro $1499
13-inch (1280x800)
Core i7 2.7GHz dual-core
4GB memory
500GB 5400 rpm
Intel HD Graphics 3000

Macbook Air $1599
13" (1440x900)
Core i5 1.7GHz dual-core
processor
4GB memory
256GB SSD
Intel HD Graphics 3000