Desktop Laptop combination?

I have an iMac/Macbook Air combo and it works well for me. I do my main editing on the iMac w/ large screen and use the MBA for on-the-go editing, general use, and when teaching classes. I bought the 11.6" MBA which is a tad small for editing, but doable, yet it's only slightly larger and heavier than my iPad to carry. If you need more screen space then the 13" is not much bigger.

Overall, they work well for my needs and the integration between them and my iPhone and iPad makes it a very convenient setup for the variety of uses that I have.
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I would make life easy and choose a nice laptop and then pair it with a docking station and nice large monitor + some external storage at home. One solution rather than 2.

Mekutotokuchiri said:

maximus1169 said:

As a highly enthusiastic amateur photographer I'd like thoughts on an ideal desktop and laptop combination. The desktop would be used for editing. As I travel a lot and like to post photos on the go, but would like to use the laptop for editing as well, at least to evaluate and sort photos on the go. Apple combination of iMac and MacBook Air or pro appeals. What combinations work for budding travel photographers?

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I have a 13" MacBook Air, and that's all I ever use. Well, except for the 27" Thunderbolt display I hook it up to at home. I find it a lot easier to have just one computer. I have the maxed out version, so it's more than enough power for my editing needs and general usage. I sold my 27" inch iMac and went all portable, banzai! Never looked back.

I hope you find the setup that works best for you. I know I did.

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I use an Asus n56 laptop with an 250gb ssd and an 1tb HDD in the DVD slot.

Gives you macbook pro speed at a much lower price point.
The desktop I use is home made with an over clocked i5.
I use an synology network HDD for storage. I can access that from everywhere.

I'm a PC guy, but it sounds like you are sold on the Mac line. I would repost your question over in the "Mac Talk" forum.

From PC land, I can report that you don't need a major installation to download and process your images. I get by with a 2012 Toshiba i3 with 4Gb RAM and 500Gb HD. Connected up to a 22" monitor the view is pretty good. You could probably pick up something like that (including monitor) for little more than $500.

tkbslc said:

I would make life easy and choose a nice laptop and then pair it with a docking station and nice large monitor + some external storage at home. One solution rather than 2.

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Agreed whole-heartedly.

Living is after all about making life easy, not the other way round. Getting a good and fast laptop and a good big monitor is an excellent solution, doing away with the cost and hassle of a bulky desktop. The added advantage of this arrangement is that one gets much more screen real estate at the same time. Definitely a thousand thumbs up from me.

hdr said:

tkbslc said:

I would make life easy and choose a nice laptop and then pair it with a docking station and nice large monitor + some external storage at home. One solution rather than 2.

Click to expand...

Agreed whole-heartedly.

Living is after all about making life easy, not the other way round. Getting a good and fast laptop and a good big monitor is an excellent solution, doing away with the cost and hassle of a bulky desktop. The added advantage of this arrangement is that one gets much more screen real estate at the same time. Definitely a thousand thumbs up from me.

Click to expand...

And you can work with dual screens. LightRoom supports this.

Instead of having two different computers, you can buy:

• One great laptop (pretty much any MacBook Pro with Retina display fits the bill, but you should buy one with at least 8GB of RAM).
• One large monitor (not very knowledgeable in that segment, but I think Apple's own 27" Thunderbolt display will do).
• One display calibration device that allows use of it to calibrate two different monitors. Buy one that supports printer-and-paper calibration if you're going to print photos yourself, instead of sending them to a lab.
• Two portable external hard drives that connect to USB 3.0 (or Thunderbolt, if you can afford it), each one at least 1TB in capacity.
• Optionally, but highly recommended - one big "workstation" external hard drive (or RAID "system").
• A mouse (or trackpad) and a keyboard will be necessary for working with the big monitor at home. You may also want to buy a Wacom tablet.
• Optional - some sort of a dock for the laptop when it's sitting on the desk. You surely can put it straight on a desk, bur if you want better cable management and all...

That surely will make your life easier.

Based on everyone's input and views along with my own research I as a matter of an hour ago made the purchase of a MBP with retina display and 8GB RAM. I added in Aperture but expect to one day move on to Lightroom. The intention from now, and when I can afford it is to purchase a monitor, likely the Apple 27", docking station and NAS (maybe the WD personal cloud - another forum question).

Ill also consider all the pherifierals mentioned in the forum replies. Thanks to everyone for your input. A great help.

WryCuda said:

hdr said:

tkbslc said:

I would make life easy and choose a nice laptop and then pair it with a docking station and nice large monitor + some external storage at home. One solution rather than 2.

Click to expand...

Agreed whole-heartedly.

Living is after all about making life easy, not the other way round. Getting a good and fast laptop and a good big monitor is an excellent solution, doing away with the cost and hassle of a bulky desktop. The added advantage of this arrangement is that one gets much more screen real estate at the same time. Definitely a thousand thumbs up from me.

Click to expand...

And you can work with dual screens. LightRoom supports this.

Click to expand...

Not only Lightroom, but ANY program will have a much bigger combined screen area to operate in. The laptop screen itself can be used as a separate window in full screen for another program while the big monitor is used for the main PP work.

With a laptop driving both the big monitor and the laptop screen at the same time, one actually has two screens to work on all time at the same time, by using the 'extended desktop' configuration. It's a wonder why more people don't go for such a sensible arrangement.

Since I started with this arrangement, the three desktop units which I own have been redundant and left untouched to collect dust.

maximus1169 said:

Based on everyone's input and views along with my own research I as a matter of an hour ago made the purchase of a MBP with retina display and 8GB RAM. I added in Aperture but expect to one day move on to Lightroom. The intention from now, and when I can afford it is to purchase a monitor, likely the Apple 27", docking station and NAS (maybe the WD personal cloud - another forum question).

Ill also consider all the pherifierals mentioned in the forum replies. Thanks to everyone for your input. A great help.

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It sounds like an excellent setup, and it's good that you're planning ahead as well. Your needs may change during the course of time, though. I have a NAS as well (a 4-bay QNAP with 8TB in RAID). However, I do keep my entire Aperture library on my computer, and I'll keep it there until it eventually outgrows my internal SSD or when it becomes too large/sluggish to function properly. Which ever comes first.

Anyway, good luck with your new setup!

nt=No Text

maximus1169 said:

Based on everyone's input and views along with my own research I as a matter of an hour ago made the purchase of a MBP with retina display and 8GB RAM.

The intention from now, and when I can afford it is to purchase a monitor, likely the Apple 27", docking station and NAS (maybe the WD personal cloud - another forum question).

Ill also consider all the peripherals mentioned in the forum replies. Thanks to everyone for your input.

Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with the Mac Docking Station, but I never found these to be necessary. It's one of those things that "sounds like a good idea", but is often impractical, and probably expensive.

When I attach my notebook computer to the larger screen, it's just a matter of plugging in the HDMI cable, and maybe attaching a mouse. There's usually enough battery for an hour or so of work, and there's wireless network available. The large screen, BTW, is normally the monitor for another computer, but it has two inputs (DVI-HDMI and VGA), and the VGA connected computer is turned off, of course.

As mentioned previously, two screens can be used in various ways, either as a duplicate screens, simple extensions to the screen real-estate, or one screen for file management and the other for editing/preview.

Ido S said:

Instead of having two different computers, you can buy:

• One great laptop (pretty much any MacBook Pro with Retina display fits the bill, but you should buy one with at least 8GB of RAM).

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All of the Retina MacBook Pros can now be ordered with 16 GB of RAM, and if the OP chooses one of these models, I'd suggest doing that, as a form of future-proofing.

Ido Scharf said:

• One large monitor (not very knowledgeable in that segment, but I think Apple's own 27" Thunderbolt display will do).

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I'd second the recommendation for a 27", 2560x1440 pixel or 30", 2560x1600 pixel monitor with an IPS screen. But if you don't need the built-in docking station features (or are willing to pay extra to get a third-party monitor + a headless third-party dock), there are better monitors available.

The issues with the Thunderbolt Display boil down to: (a) glossy screen, which probably has not had the "reduced reflectivity" treatment of the latest rMBPs and iMacs, (b) no USB 3.0 ports (there are now third-party docks that have these), and fewer high-end features than high-end monitors such as NECs that are specifically aimed at photographers. It's still better than the vast majority of monitors sold in big-box retail stores, but if you're spending that much, you might as well look at alternatives.

Mystery member said:

WryCuda wrote:

I'm not familiar with the Mac Docking Station, but I never found these to be necessary. It's one of those things that "sounds like a good idea", but is often impractical, and probably expensive.

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Mac docking stations hook up via Thunderbolt. So you would plug one data cable and one power cable into your laptop. That would give you access to your monitor, and to everything plugged into the dock - such as a wired Ethernet connection, a printer/scanner, additional hard drives, a keyboard, and a mouse. (If you had two external monitors, the second monitor would need to be on its own port, so the two-cable docking solution would become a three-cable docking solution.)

There are a few PC laptops (not many) that have Thunderbolt, and presumably you could dock them in the same fashion. On other PCs, docking seems to involve having connectors with huge numbers of pins on the back or bottom of the laptop; you align the laptop to the dock and hunt around a bit until the halves click together.

Long, long ago, there were Macs that docked like VHS tape cassettes (PowerBook Duos; Duo Docks). The first versions of those had motorized inject (the dock would grab the notebook) and eject, just like a VCR. No word on how many toddlers tried to shove PB&J sandwiches into the notebook slot.

Tom_N said:

On other PCs, docking seems to involve having connectors with huge numbers of pins on the back or bottom of the laptop; you align the laptop to the dock and hunt around a bit until the halves click together.

Long, long ago, there were Macs that docked like VHS tape cassettes (PowerBook Duos; Duo Docks). The first versions of those had motorized inject (the dock would grab the notebook) and eject, just like a VCR. No word on how many toddlers tried to shove PB&J sandwiches into the notebook slot.

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That was the type of PC Dock that I was thinking about.

There were generations of Apple/Mac "good ideas" like the VCR grabber.

I was once asked to review a school's inventory of computer equipment, and I came across a room full of discarded Apple/Mac stuff. Much of it was unidentifiable and there were snake-pits of accessory cables that were nearly as thick as your index finger. I dubbed this the "Apple Museum" and declared it to contain nothing of value. I was pretty safe doing that, as it was all more than 3 years old; I shudder to think of the initial purchase price.

BTW, I do have an iPad. Almost no connectors these days!