The new 2011 MacBook Pro vs 2010 MacBook Air for travel bird photography

[Tin Man Lee]

Bird photographers tend to travel a lot. And photo editing is also essential from simple noise reduction and sharpening, to many layers and filtering works. A good laptop that's not heavy yet can handle daily editing and storage seems to be ideal.

I have been thinking about getting a sexy and super lightweight 13 inch MacBook Air with 4GB Ram and 128GB SSD for LR3 and some simple CS5 NR and sharpening (already have a iMac 27inch i7 at home for more serious advanced editing..not that I know any yet), but now that the new MacBook Pro is out yesterday, I need to seek some advice from you guys.

The 13 inch MBP has lower resolution than the MBA but with the 15 inch MBP you can get matte screen, 8GB and SSD and it seems to be perfect for photo editing. But I think the 15 inch MBP is a bit too heavy for travelling. (Well what am I complaining if I have to carry the 500mm anyways.. but that MBA is really so light) Should I go all out and get the high end 15 inch MBP?

Which one do you prefer and what specs? What are you using currently and what do you think?

Thanks!

[Chris Korman]

If you value weight and space over ultimate computing power then the Air would be my thought. Just make sure it has the right connection ports and storage space for your setup.

[Doug Brown]

I ditched my 15" MBP for a 13" MBA last year precisely because of the weight savings for travel. When I lead workshops I bring a laptop for lectures, image backup/editing, and PS/LR instruction (not to mention internet/email). The Air is perfectly competent at those tasks (although I wouldn't call it speedy). It's like 1/2 the weight of the MBP. Combine that with the 3 pound weight savings of the new 600mm Canon lens, and I'm going to be one happy traveler! BTW I got the larger SSD so that I won't run out of space for image backup (I photograph for 2 consecutive weeks when I go to Costa Rica).

[Cody Covey]

I ditched my 15" MBP for a 13" MBA last year precisely because of the weight savings for travel. When I lead workshops I bring a laptop for lectures, image backup/editing, and PS/LR instruction (not to mention internet/email). The Air is perfectly competent at those tasks (although I wouldn't call it speedy). It's like 1/2 the weight of the MBP. Combine that with the 3 pound weight savings of the new 600mm Canon lens, and I'm going to be one happy traveler! BTW I got the larger SSD so that I won't run out of space for image backup (I photograph for 2 consecutive weeks when I go to Costa Rica).
I know when they first came out they had some pretty bad hardware issues. BUT if Doug's experience is indicative of them fixing those issues Id say for travel purposes you probably can't go wrong with the MBA. Be mindful of ports and in case you didn't already know (I'm sure you do) Don't forget they don't have a CD drive (probably not that big of a deal).

[Asta Tobiassen]

I just purchased the 13" MBA with the configuration you mentioned, based on some very good advise I received here on BPN. I also have LR 3 on it. I couldn't be happier with it. The weight savings is fantastic and it still feels very solid (I was concerned it would be a little fragile). The speed is very impressive. The screen resolution looks great. I bought this computer for travel and on occasion I travel on small planes that have serious weight restrictions, so the 3 pounds I've saved here is really important to me (and my back:S3:).
Good luck with your decision.

[John Chardine]

A few things to consider. First I love the MBAs I have seen and used. However, I would be concerned with the limited solid-state drive size, which maxes out at 256 GB for the higher model. This has to contain System, programs and documents. For photographic use, "documents" means for the most part images, which run in the region of 20mb ± for RAWs these days. For any lengthy trip away you have to plan for storage capacity so that you have room for all your keepers. When I'm away for 6 weeks in the southern hemisphere, it seems I bring home about 10,000 images with some minor culling, which translates to about 200 GB of images in my case (Canon 1DIV). My (old) Macbook with a 500MB hard disk can carry this many files and I backup to an external drive. If you were really paranoid you could back up to two drives. So, with a MBA/256GB you would be forced to bring an external drive to store images, and another drive or two for backups. Though perhaps a minor point these days, if you needed to burn a CD or DVD you would have to have an external one. All this adds to the total weight of a MBA system.

Now a quick weight calculation:
1. 13" MBA/256GB with 2 external 500 GB WD Passport drives, Superdrive = 2.2 kg, 4.9 lbs (4.2 lbs without the Superdrive)
2. 13" Macbook Pro with 1 external 500 GB WD Passport drive = 2.3 kg, 5.1 lbs

Bottom line for me is that the Macbook Pro 13" is a pretty good compromise of weight and power/capacity.

[Tin Man Lee]

Thanks all. It's a tough choice. I have heard horror stories of hard drive failures so seems like backing up to 1 or 2 external drives is necessary. i wonder how the new thunderbolt in MBP performs in backing up files.