I want to change our home laptop since it’s slower than a slow thing. I fancy a MacBook Air, and have access to one though a family member who wants rid of their almost new one at a great price. The problem is that they only have 64G internal memory, so to hold all our videos and iTunes songs etc i need to have a 500G drive sort of permanently attached.

The alternative is a MacBook Pro which is heavier and more expensive, but has a 500G internal hard drive.

Does anyone run their laptop with all their songs and stuff on an external drive. Is is an ok thing to do, or stupid?

I think your getting confused with ram and hdd?

And yes an external hd would be fine (but see my first point before going ahead)

I think you’ll find its “pooter”

Please forgive my inadequate grammar. Pooter it is.

I may be a pooter noob, but I am pretty sure that the MacBook Air in question is practically out of memory when it doesn’t seem to have much stuff on it.

HDD = Hard Drive the place where you store files

RAM = Random Access Memory = Memory where files are stored temporary.

Air has 64Gb of HDD space, if you want to use an external drive and are saving enough then the Apple time capsule will be a great choice, large wireless storage space that will work smoothly with an Apple devices you own.

Memory isn’t hard drive (ie: space for media)

You need an afternoon with my niece. She’s 18 studying I.T., blonde with a decent ram to boot

It appears that it’s HDD storage space which is my concern then. Has anyone used external storage like I’m proposing to do, but found out after a while that it turned out to be a pain always dragging a separate storage device around with them for music/movies/photos?

^ question already answered

I’m out

I helped a friend set up a Seagate GoFlex Home NAS storage device with his Macbook Air.
Took about 20mins and was a lot cheaper than an Apple Time Capsule.
You get the advantage of easy backups and sharing with both Windows and OSX. itunes and photos synced up easily aswell.

…or you could spend an extra 100+quid for a white box which will do the same but maybe not be as easy to use outside OSX.

Grassyarse for the advice guys.

I think you’ll find it’s “nub”

😉

Does anyone run their laptop with all their songs and stuff on an external drive. Is is an ok thing to do, or stupid?

If it’s almost always going to be a ‘home’ laptop, couldn’t you stick all your movies etc on a NAS?

Also, fwiw, MBAs go up to 256GB HDD – that’s what I’ve got. The only time I’ve wished for an MBP over my MBA has been setting up Time Machine backups and finding out that the USB NIC is only 100baseT.

I pay 9.99 a month for a spotify subscription and am close to archiving 100gb of music that I never use now.

Local storage is outdated.

Local storage is outdated.

Unless spotify go bust, or change their business model, or you have internet issues, or you like your music to have higher quality than a 1970’s car stereo.

YMMV

I have a 64gb MacBook Air that I use for work. It’s fantastically light and small which is great for travelling, but the small storage space is an issue so an external HD is a must. That said, when the time comes to replace it I’ll buy an Air again.

Go chat to the folks in an Apple store … I found them very helpful when I asked the exact same question in the Harrogate store. I couldn’t get my head around the 64 gb of storage (it’s ss flash drive not hdd )

Basically the guy said ” Air is for taking stuff around and minor tweaks etc but you don’t load the programmes to create stuff, that would be done at home on your Mac , Pro etc
If you want to use it for storing and creating documents you need a lapbook pro “

Of course your needs may well differ to mine but I do find the Apple stores very good for advice in so much as they seem to know what they are talking about

There isn’t an Apple store in Harrogate. It’s an independent cleverly masquerading as one and the person I spoke to was clueless (as was the person you spoke to quite clearly).

Ohh and our business has four Airs, all used for web development and stuffed full of software.

We do have a work server for storing work though.

Air is for taking stuff around and minor tweaks etc but you don’t load the programmes to create stuff, that would be done at home on your Mac , Pro etc
If you want to use it for storing and creating documents you need a lapbook pro

You guys are all aware that Apple don’t exactly make a secret of the fact you can get bigger Flash drives in the MBA, aren’t you?

The NotMacShop guy missed a chance to upsell a ThunderBolt SSD as a means of using an MBA as a main computer. Though I cope fine with a USB disk for all my bulky stuff. But then, it’s not my main PC either.

Haven’t read the above but my two penne’orth as a mac user: Depends what you want it for. For a desktop replacement type affair, get the Pro. If you need something light to carry around with you get the Air.

I’d also recommend getting an Apple time capsule.

I’d also recommend getting an Apple time capsule.

+1

I’ve just set up my new Mac Mini Server as one, and this is the first time I’ve really dabbled with Time Machine. Very easy to set up, and already looks to be very useful, if only for the “Oh shit, I meant Save AS!” moments.