Will A 2011 Macbook Air Work For The Traveling Photographer ?

Apple released newer, faster versions of the 11" and 13" Macbook Air in he summer of 2011 and I was curious to see whether the spec bump put them in a position where they could be used as an on-the-road solution for a photographer.

To show you the speed of a maxed out 11" Air I have created this video where I run though some common tasks for a photographer who is on the road shooting for an event or assignment. The demo shows ingesting cards to Lightroom and Photo Mechanic as well as opening some huge 20 layer Photoshop files in CS5 all in real time so you can see the real speed.



I have now sold my 15" Macbook Pro in favor of this 11" version. I love the speed at which it writes files to the internal solid state drive and most tasks are performed faster than my 2 year old Macbook Pro but in a physical package that's almost unnoticeable in my bag. I've found in several cases that I can fit this laptop in bags not nearly designed for holding a computer, like the Think Tank Retrospective 10. I will note that the screen is not as high quality as my old pro but for me that is fine, I still do all my color correction at home in the office on a large calibrated monitor and the Air's screen is still good enough for basic stuff and gorgeous for watching movies on. It's size also lends itself well to doing work on the plane if you like to stay productive, you can easily work at it on a seat back table which was something I found tough with the 15" Pro.