Macbook Air 11 the best for me for years
I have been using an 11" macbook air as my primary computer since Apple first released them. I find it to be the best machine for me for now. In this article I describe what I use my computer for and how well the 11" macbook air performs. My current machine is a 2015 Macbook air 11-inch with the i5 processor, 4GB RAM, 265GB storage, and USB 3.0 ports.
Interestingly, except for the limitations that I mention in each section below, most things generally work better, faster, and more reliably on my mac than on the Windows PCs with the company image.
Work
I am engineer and use my macbook air for almost all of my work. My work consists of- writing and editing long-form, technical documents in collaboration with others
- marking up PDF drawings
- producing the occasional sketch or organizational chart
- personal information such as email, calendar, and contacts
- instant messages
- video conferencing with screen sharing
- video production
- some SharePoint administration.
Interestingly, except for the limitations that I mention in each section below, most things generally work better, faster, and more reliably on my mac than on the Windows PCs with the company image.
Technical documents
My company uses Office 365 for everyone, so I can download the 2016 versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook to my Macbook Air for free. I use them to collaborate with my colleagues on various documents. I am pleased with these versions as compared to previous versions. There are a few SharePoint-specific things I cannot do in Excel, but no one really takes advantage of those features yet, so it has not been a problem.
I have to give a shout out to Microsoft for its new Office Lens app on the iPhone. I use it at least once a week to take pictures of things we draw in the conference room whiteboard so I can include the picture in the minutes of the meeting. It has several presets for whiteboard, document, business card, etc and works amazingly well. When I save the image to my OneDrive account, it is on my macbook air by the time I am ready to add it to the Word Document.
PDF documents
Since I work in Engineering, I jumped at the chance to be a beta tester for Bluebeam Revu for Mac. I use the release version now marking up engineering documents like schedules and drawings. The Mac version is not quite as good as the windows version yet, so I still need Adobe Acrobat XI for a few things, but Revu is my go-to PDF program for work.
Sketches and Charts
I use a combination of AutoCAD for Mac, OmniGraffle, Excel, and PowerPoint for sketches and charts depending on complexity, source data, and target usage by the audience. AutoCAD 2016 has some nice performance enhancements that make it very nice to use on my Macbook Air. OmniGraffle solves my need to open/edit Visio diagrams.
Personal Information Management
I prefer to use the programs built into OS X, namely Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and Notes because I find the user experience to be better. However, Outlook is still better for setting up meetings with multiple individuals and meeting rooms, especially if it is going to be a Lync (now Skype for Business) meeting.
I really love how robust and fast the search is in Mail. It usually only takes me a few seconds to find the messages I need, even if they are years old. It is considerably harder to find the right messages in Outlook.
In OS X El Capitan, I just go the System Preferences -> Internet Accounts and add an Exchange account. I put in my work credentials and the built-in programs are configured automatically for me. In Outlook, it is equally easy. Kudos to Microsoft for making Office 365 so well supported on all platforms.
Instant Messages
We use Lync 2013 at work for instant messages, including audio/video calls and content sharing. The current Mac client is Lync 2011, and a preview of Skype for Business is out. I cannot initiate PowerPoint sharing from my Mac or participate in whiteboard sharing at all, but the basics of desktop sharing, audio, video, and i.m. all work fine.
Video Conferencing
Our customers and subcontractors use WebEx and Citrix for video conferencing. I have no trouble at all participating in these sessions on my mac.
Video Production
Once or twice a year, I am called upon to produce a short video for work. I use iMovie to make the videos and have gotten source footage from various sources. The last one I did used footage mostly from iPhones and came out great. I also make the occasional video tutorial about some new tool or feature. I usually use the built-in Quicktime screen recording for that. Since we installed Windows 7 on all the work machines, my colleagues have had no problems viewing the videos.
SharePoint
We use SharePoint a lot at work, and starting with version 2013, almost everything can be done on the mac. Opening web queries in the mac version of Excel is not supported, and neither is "Open with Explorer" (formerly called "Explorer View"). Also, creating a list from an Excel spreadsheet is not supported. All three of those features require ActiveX controls which only work in Internet Explorer on Windows. Everything else works great. I just wish my company would allow the free add-in to allow us to download multiple files at once without using "Open with Explorer".
One particularly nice feature that came with 2013 is the ability edit a file on SharePoint just by clicking on its link on the web page. Previously, I had to download the file manually, and manually upload the revised version. The 2016 version of Office applications handle all this for me very nicely. Not to mention the fact that in many cases, I can just edit the file in the web browser without downloading it. For Word, the co-authoring features for .docx files works a treat in both the browser and the Word client.
Cloud Storage
Our Office 365 subscription comes with 1 TB of personal cloud storage for each employee and the sync client for the mac finally works well. I save all my work-related files in my OneDrive for Business folder on my mac so they are available on the web and on my Windows PC. Office Lens on the iPhone will save to my OneDrive storage space which keeps all my work pictures out of my personal photo libraries.
Personal
On the personal side of things, my laptop is really just a hobby toy. I have no real computing needs that are not satisfied by my iPhone. I do love to play with all things computer related, though. I have put together various photo montages with iPhoto, Keynote, and iMovie.
I like to use LaTeX for my long personal documents. I also once write a perl program to convert select words to images in a LaTeX document to support production of cards for a game. It worked well and only took about 30 seconds to do hundreds of substitutions in a 400-page book I had previously made in LaTeX.
I also like to download my movies and TV shows, so I use iTunes to feed content to my Apple TV at home. I have my content mirrored on two hard drives: one stays at home connected to my Airport Extreme Base Station router, and the other goes with me everywhere. The file hierarchy is the same on both drives, so the iTunes finds them easily regardless of which drive I decide to use at the time.
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