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Author Topic: Travel Ultrabook  (Read 5902 times)

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« on: March 02, 2012, 00:00 »
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I do a lot of travel and I am looking at getting either a macbook air 11 inch or the ASUS 11inch Zenbook. I like the compact and light weight with some reasonable processing specs.

Any comments, suggestions or random abuse ?


« Reply #1 on: March 02, 2012, 08:56 »
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I have a Macbook Air and it's great - light weight and fairly durable.  They just came out with a new one that sounds even better but I haven't seen it yet.  Don't know anything about the Zenbook.

« Reply #2 on: March 02, 2012, 09:11 »
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I'm not a mac fan (perhaps more anti-mac) but have been really happy with the macbook air (11") .  I like the full size keyboard and the size is really great.  The multi-touch gestures are also really nice for working on a small screen / laptop.

On a desktop, I'm only windows ;)

« Reply #3 on: March 02, 2012, 09:50 »
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I used on my last photo trip a galaxy tab 10.1 with the usb adapter and few  cards I managed to transfer about 30Gb by connecting my camera to the tablet. Of course no postprocessing but I could look at the raw files...

RacePhoto

« Reply #4 on: March 03, 2012, 14:05 »
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I do a lot of travel and I am looking at getting either a macbook air 11 inch or the ASUS 11inch Zenbook. I like the compact and light weight with some reasonable processing specs.

Any comments, suggestions or random abuse ?

What do you want to do with it? Sorry but that's an important part of the answer? Kind of like "What kind of car should I buy, I'm going on a trip next month"  ;D

Look at files, upload, download, back up? Get an ASUS because it's much less expensive, nice monitor.  Own an ASUS eee PC netbook for travel, external hard drive for storage.

Full out processing and editing, suitable for immediate distribution? Get a Macbook. Get the matte screen if they still offer it? Nothing beats the monitors on a Mac that I know of.

(I'm a Windows user, have a Compaq 8510W laptop with a special monitor that's designed for photos and graphics. Goes to work on the road, at the races.) USB Hard drive backup.

Price?  ???

« Reply #5 on: March 03, 2012, 15:28 »
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The rumours are they're updating the Mac Pro line in the very near future. Top spec pro machine in an Mac Air case. The new Intel chips ship in April, Apple are typically first in line. I'll be upgrading for sure :) went Mac in 2007 and never looked back.

« Reply #6 on: March 04, 2012, 03:59 »
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Thanks for the responses.

The rumours are they're updating the Mac Pro line in the very near future. Top spec pro machine in an Mac Air case. The new Intel chips ship in April, Apple are typically first in line. I'll be upgrading for sure :) went Mac in 2007 and never looked back.

I like the sound of that, unfortunately (or fortunately) my next trip is in early april.

In Australia the Zenbook is basically the same price as the macbook air.

I've never owned an Asus. Any comments about their quality ?

"What do you want to do with it? Sorry but that's an important part of the answer? Kind of like "What kind of car should I buy, I'm going on a trip next month"

I'm travelling with backpack so compact is essential. The plan is to use it for loading and viewing files. Photo processing and web browsing. The specs of both of these two computers are better than my existing computer. (3 year old dell)

« Reply #7 on: March 04, 2012, 11:40 »
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Asus is a good brand. Build motherboards, graphic cards in a lot of new computers for many people over the years and never seen any hardware problems. Also the Asus notebooks I ve seen seem to do their job well. They also give two years of guarantee on notebooks instead of one, as most of the others do and they are not very expensive when making a comparison of the specs to same type of notebooks with other brands . This is based on my own experience, I have no statistic info. Also prices may differ in other parts of the world, dont know...

Also a point to think of: all harddisks has become very expensive lately thanks to the floods in Thailand. I suppose this will be temporary. An option is perhaps to buy a notebook with a smaller harddisk and replace it in the future with a bigger one. You need to have a backup of your OS at that time to replace everything as this info is on the old harddisk in a separate partition.

Cant tell you anything about the screen quality of the notebooks and if they can easily be callibrated. That is an important thing for photographers when you want to use it for working on your photos cq illustrations.
 

WarrenPrice

« Reply #8 on: March 04, 2012, 11:57 »
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Is "Notebook" being used here to define something similar to an iPad or Kindle Fire ... or is it more similar to Laptop?

Didn't know Asus had anything similar to iPad?

RacePhoto

« Reply #9 on: March 04, 2012, 13:22 »
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Is "Notebook" being used here to define something similar to an iPad or Kindle Fire ... or is it more similar to Laptop?

Didn't know Asus had anything similar to iPad?

Confusing isn't it?

Notebooks: are bigger, usually what you thing of as a portable computer, probably has a DVD drive, hard drive and fairly substantial. 2-3 hour battery life, 14,15,17 screens, real hard drives, CD/DVD.

Netbooks: Smaller, maybe reduced keyboard, 95% some are even smaller. Often have no CD/DVD, solid state Electronic hard drive. 7 hours on battery on a good day. 10" is common.

UltraBooks: (what these are in the thread) Ultra slim, ultra light, ultra new and expensive, full keyboard.  :) 5 hours battery life, Solid State Hard Drive - double the price of a Netbook or Notebook, more computing power just because they are the latest.

Hope that helps explain it a little better?

Personally, if I was traveling light, I'd still go with a Netbook. (carry an external backup drive for photos) But as I've admitted before "I'm Cheap". When it comes down to a $400 loaded netbook, or a $1100 bare bones Ultrabook, I don't see that much of an advantage in spending $700 more for a flashy case and slightly bigger screen. I have $2 reading glasses.

Mac: price and I have no software, so add another couple thousand for editing and utilities, I'd buy a MacBook because of the image quality. I don't have $3000-$4000 laying around, so I stick with PCs.

What you asked about may be palm size, tablets, attache size, and i-stuff. 3-7" screen, although there are some 10"? Most don't even have a keyboard option, touch screen. Most don't run standard computer software. Nothing like the above "books" at all. I think Asus makes a netbook that folds over and becomes a tablet. That's kind of interesting. Kindles are horrid for web surfing, great for reading. I have a Kindle Fire, it's "cute" and novel, but from my viewpoint, very uncomfortable for web use.

« Reply #10 on: March 04, 2012, 14:27 »
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I had a HP netbook before. It was much cheaper than what I'm proposing here and although it was okay for web browsing (what it was designed to do) it wasn't even up to scrolling through photos from 5dmkII without annoying long pauses whilst loading. It died last time I tried loading photos onto it.

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #11 on: March 04, 2012, 18:58 »
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I got an HP netbook before my last trip.
Fine for browsing, slow but bearable (faster than the Epson thingy I had before) for looking through photos (5D2 RAWs), almost full sized keyboard. The small screen makes it difficult to do any editing, but I was really just thinking to use it to store images, to delete the duds and 'seconds' and to add keywords. Upgraded to 2Gb ram, of course.


 

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