_MSP1021 Hey Everyone!  I'm sitting here while Hurricane Florence is outside.  As of this point we've had over 11 inches of rain and it's still raining.  So I figured I would give you an update to my Mobile Computing Blog that I posted earlier this year.  As you may remember, I purchased a Lenovo Miix 320 for under $200.  My three criteria for a mobile were inexpensive, small and lightweight, and able to run Lightroom.  And this little laptop did just that.  I have used it most of this year when I go camping or on a trip.  But something happened with an update or something, and it really struggled to run Lightroom and download photographs.  If you have been following me on Facebook or Instagram, you know I recently took a little trip to Savannah, GA and Charleston, SC.  Of course I took my camera and took lots of photos, and every night when I went to import into Lightroom it really struggled.  The first night it locked up a couple of times, and I had to restart my computer.  When it finally did go to download, it took maybe half an hour to download 300 photos.  So every night I would spend an hour or two just getting my photos imported, which is not acceptable.  When I got home, I took off all of the extra stuff that computer companies put on a computer trying to free up some RAM so apple-macbook-air-core-i5-8gb-256gb-mqd42hna-13-inch-hd-18ghz-intel-graphics-6000-laptop it would run Lightroom better.  I went to a small festival in town and took 70 photos, and it took me two hours using the little Lenovo to get the photos downloaded.  Now, I could use the little laptop to just transfer photographs from my SD card to an external hard drive without using Lightroom, but with windows you can't view RAW files without an external program to see the photo.  If it did, that would work, but it doesn't.  I still wish this little computer would work, but it just is too weak to use Lightroom so I can cull and process a few photographs while on the road.  It does everything else I want it to do, but just not that.  So I had to find something else for my mobile computing that hopefully would tick all the three criteria that I wanted.  

I am heavily invested in Mac products and the Apple ecosystem.  And if I had to re-invest in another laptop I wanted it to be a Mac. Windows 10 isn't my cup of tea.  So I went on a search for a machine that would work. Good luck!  I looked at refurbished machines, new machines, used ones, and I still would be spending a lot of money.  So I took my advice and bought the best machine that I could afford to do the job that I wanted.  And that was the machine that I mentioned in the other blog, the 13-inch MacBook Air.  This machine did not tick all of the boxes.  The box that it didn't tick was price.  All of the  2563e370f98e53afa59b4ddfed93f621 MacBooks that I looked at, even the refurbished ones, were well over $500.  So I decided if I had to pay that kind of money, I would get something that I liked and that would easily do the job, so I bought a new one (well, a 2017 one).  It has 8gb of RAM, which is well enough to do what I want to do with this machine.  Remember, I don't want to do heavy computing or editing on this computer, just backup cull and maybe quick processing for posting to Facebook or Instagram.  This 8gb RAM and 256 SSD drive works perfectly for what I want it to do.  It ticks the second box, run Lightroom and backup photos.  The MacBook Air 13-inch is considerably larger than the Lenovo, but the weight isn't much more.  The battery life is great, also a plus in mobile computing.  So it also ticked the third box of being lightweight.  So I am happy with my purchase but do wish the little Lenovo worked just for the cost.  So now all of my personal computers are Mac.  The 27-inch Mac is my main computer, the 15-inch MacBook Pro is my backup and home laptop, and the new addition of the 13-inch MacBook Air is for my mobile computing. 

So I should be all set for my Fall workshop to DC with my camera club (Goldsboro Area Photography Club).  I'm also doing this blog on the new laptop.  What will happen to the Lenovo?  I'm sure my grandchildren will end up with it before too long.  So get out and shoot!