[Macworld]

Post your comments for The MacBook Air austerity program here

[flybynight]

Good luck with that. I'm guessing that you'll need to purge a little bit more, but hard to say.
Sounds a lot like when I set up my iPhone. Sure, 8Gb is plenty of music, but it's sure not ALL my music. And how will I know what I'm in the mood for at any given moment. It seems silly to carry both an iPod and and iPhone every day, so some choices had to be made!

[MacosNerd]

I faced the same issue when I moved from a MacPro to my Macbook Pro. Trying to fit half terebyte into 150gig drive.

Going through your drive and cleaning up is necessary but one that most people (including me) fail to do until faced with storage shortages.

[Adwiz]

Good "reality check" article. I'm looking forward to getting a MacBook Air myself, but I got used to this exercise when I bought a PowerBook recently, which had only 80GB storage. As an advertising creative guy, I use a desktop Mac with five 500GB drives plus one 1TB drive. My active client files total about 300GB of data, so I've already gotten used to deleting stuff off the PowerBook and then transferring only the relevant data I'll need to my portable Mac. The challenge is coordinating the portable machine with the desktop machine; there's always a risk that I'll overwrite files I created while on the road with those from my desktop machine the next time I get set to go to a client meeting. This issue is something Apple would be very wise to address as the company moves forward with this strategy. I'd like to see an Apple-designed "sync" software which would let me tag key folders or files to keep on my portable machine so that when I return to the office I can sync the two automatically. This would allow me to keep a lean machine for my road warrior activities and use my desktop machine when I get to the office without worrying that one or the other is running an older version of the same file.

[Walt_Basil]

And with yet a couple more weeks of use, maybe you'll come to terms with the fact that this is not meant to replace your current computers, but to augment them. Given that thought, perhaps you shouldn't have deleted all those things you wanted to keep. But you are Macworld right? You already knew this right? Geesh... I hope so. I would hate to think that Mac users are now telling Macworld what they are supposed to be doing with their hardware.

[pln]

I manage huge iTunes and iPhoto libraries (currently 300GB and rising) on a laptop by maintaining separate accounts for work and pleasure, and using an external FireWire drive.
The work account location is on the internal hard drive, but the pleasure account, which I use only when sitting at my desk at home, is on the FW drive. I used Leopard's hidden advanced options context menu on the account preferences page to define the account location to be on the FW drive.
If I want to take some movies or tunes with me (although I use an iPhone for that mainly) I just copy files from the pleasure account to the Shared directory and remove them if I need the space, knowing I have them on the external drive.

[Jason Snell]

Walt_Basil said:

And with yet a couple more weeks of use, maybe you'll come to terms with the fact that this is not meant to replace your current computers, but to augment them.

Who says it's meant only to augment your current computers, Walt? Apple seems to be selling it as a full-on Mac laptop, not some sort of sidekick product.

Me, I'm a full-time laptop user. If I am to adopt the MacBook Air, it must be my main system. I have a large external drive at work for when I'm at work, so that's similar to having a main system. But not the same.

>Given that thought, perhaps you shouldn't have deleted all those things you wanted to keep.

You might want to read my article a bit more closely. I deleted very little, largely things that are downloadable from the Internet. Most of my stuff I moved off to an external USB drive. I certainly didn't delete any things I wanted to keep.

[Morrick]

Every now and then it's useful to take some time and do some "mac spring cleaning" anyway. I think I'm quite zen with the data on my PowerBook G4. It still has its original 40 GB hard drive and I managed to use up only 30 GB of hard disk space.

All old data, cumbersome media files and such have been transferred to external hard drives. My 40 GB iTunes library lives in an external drive, too. Fortunately I mainly work with text, so all the "Work" folders contain txts, rtfs, docs, pdfs and indds files, but in any case, everything that's older than 2006 included gets directly to my "lifeboat", as you say. And when I'm on the go I use an old 3G iPod as a portable external drive. It has Firewire -- yum.

I really look forward to reading a "Hands on" article on the MacBook Air. I believe that, despite much of the abstract criticism I've read so far around the Web, when one actually uses the Air the music is going to change a bit -- for the better.

Cheers,
RM

[Kore]

What are you going to use to move everything over? Migration assistant can work remotely with the air, right?

[tpernal]

Me thinks some of you may be missing the MacBook Air's intent.
I don't think it was engineered to replace existing setups at all. Only to serve as a more portable satellite option to your base system.
Or is it me????
TP

[Walt_Basil]

Jason Snell said:

Who says it's meant only to augment your current computers, Walt? Apple seems to be selling it as a full-on Mac laptop, not some sort of sidekick product.

No one came right out and said it, but it stands to reason to me. Who in their right mind is going to give up the comfort of their hundreds of gigs for a paltry 64 or 80 GB hard drive? I'm certainly not. And if you (not you Jason... just a 2nd or 3rd person) do, well, you get what you asked for and deserve whatever setbacks you encounter in both size and technology. Every new computer I bought has been an upgrade. You know, add the .49 to it and supersize me baby. So this is why I say it's common sense to view this as an augmentation. I could be wrong. Would you (I mean you this time Jason)? If it's not an upgrade, then it's a trade off for something else. Something else does not equal a replacement.

Quote

Me, I'm a full-time laptop user. If I am to adopt the MacBook Air, it must be my main system. I have a large external drive at work for when I'm at work, so that's similar to having a main system. But not the same.

I also am a full time laptop user, with my maxed out PowerBook G4 still alive and kicking along with over a TB of external storage.

Quote

You might want to read my article a bit more closely. I deleted very little, largely things that are downloadable from the Internet. Most of my stuff I moved off to an external USB drive. I certainly didn't delete any things I wanted to keep.

I read it fully, and understand what you did. On the other side, I also understand that you have pretty much unlimited (consumer-wise) resources at your disposal, working for the rag and all. The general user, who I am assuming this article was written for, may or may not have that type of storage, and would have to view your article as a how to for getting rid of all that space so that you can take what you have now, and make it fit on something smaller. You moved it. Someone else may even have to delete it. The point is, if you have to move it, it's not in the running for being your main machine. Unless you just can't afford something larger, which obviously isn't the case with the MBA. ;-)

You also mentioned moving your media. To me, that's my life. Not something "very little." I have maybe 30MB of stuff that pertains to work. Everything else is me. Between iTunes and iPhoto, I have over 60GB residing on my laptop's drive. Stuff that I'm using right now, and can't afford to put over on a lifeboat. All my favorite songs (4-5 star) equal about 6 GB. TV series that I'm currently watching is around 40-60 GB at any given time. Once I'm done with them (TV), it's to the external for them for archival. Maybe a GB in photos. My point is, it can't be my main machine and still have to carry around some external drives or constantly swap between external and my HD. Maybe to someone who is just getting started with their computing experience, but not people like you or myself who have been at this since the early 90's. We've got a lot of baggage that we consider to be our life. Apple et al knows this too as is evident by the ever increasing amount of internal storage capacity and bandwidth in internet services.

Oh well... like something else that we all have... this is my opinion... ;-)

[Adwiz]

I think it's a bit of both. Many people (my daughters are good examples) are perfectly happy with 80GB and will take a couple of years to fill that space, even in college. They would appreciate the MacBook Air for its form factor alone, even though it's pricey compared feature-by-feature to a regular MacBook. There are corporate executive users who don't use files any larger than Word and Excel and will take years to fill up a drive like that. They would want the Air for its "coolness" factor. Then there are business users like me who need tons of storage and horsepower, but will never use it as their primary computer. We just want a very thin computer to place into our always-too-full briefcase for client meetings, business trips and Keynote presentations.

[tpernal]

thank you... thank you very much
MacBook Air is a different strokes for different folks unit.
Not as I mentioned a stand alone everything in one very slim box computing solution.

[Jason Snell]

Hey, Walt, everyone's entitled to an opinion. I think the idea that my piece is "written for the general user" isn't entirely accurate -- it's written for people who care about this stuff (which is not quite general, geekier than that) and it's not meant to be a how-to -- it's meant to be a diary of what I did. I don't really ascribe much more into it than that -- but it sure shocked me when I realized that I had to struggle to get down to 80G.
I think the "main system" distinction is really artificial. Frankly, having a 500G drive at your desk is cheaper than having an iMac or a Mac Pro at your desk... and you basically get the same thing in terms of storage. Not processor or anything, but in terms of storage there's not a lot of difference.