Is MacBook Air 1.4ghz enough to run LR4?

It is not the clock speed that is the issue.

An Air that is old enough to have only 2 GB of RAM will also have USB 2.0 - not the fastest port for connecting card readers. 2 GB of RAM is the bare minimum for Lightroom 4 - which probably means that to get it to run at full speed, you need more.

Personally, I would go for an 8 GB Air, but if you would prefer to trade a lower price now for a shorter useful life later, you could look for refurbished current-generation Airs (with USB 3.0 and at least 4 GB of RAM) in the refurbished section of the online Apple Store.

Tom_N said:

Tom_N wrote:

It is not the clock speed that is the issue.

An Air that is old enough to have only 2 GB of RAM will also have USB 2.0 - not the fastest port for connecting card readers. 2 GB of RAM is the bare minimum for Lightroom 4 - which probably means that to get it to run at full speed, you need more.

Click to expand...

A USB 3.0 reader connected to a USB 2.0 port will still be faster than a USB 2.0 reader. I have USB 2.0 ports on my Macbook Pro and saw a big increase in speed when I started using a USB 3.0 reader from Transcend. The reader would be the least of my worries. The low RAM would bother me more, although Lightroom will still run.

Are you processing on this machine, or simply storing them as project files and working with them on a workstation?