Hey Ya'll! Hope everyone is having a great week. We just got through a big snow storm (for us) in North Carolina with about 10 inches of snow and very cold weather. So I've been inside for almost a week. Just went out today. So I've been spending my time getting ready for presentations that I'm doing this year for our photography club and writing blogs. Really anything inside that I can do to keep me from going crazy. Last year I sold one of my cameras. You can check out the link here Paring Down My Cameras. Now I took the money that I made and just put into savings and vowed when I got my income tax return I would use it and the tax return to buy a new laptop. Well while being cooped up in the house I did my taxes as soon as I could and got my return very fast. So with all that said I'm buying a new Laptop ! Yay! I haven't bought a new laptop since 2017 when I purchased a Macbook Air which I used until about a year or so ago when I bought a 2018 MacBook Pro from one of my club members. It had better specs than the Air that I had. It was always meant to be a go between until I could get a new Laptop. Well that day has come.

The Laptop. The laptop that I chose was the Apple MacBook Pro with the M-5 Chip. It's the 14 inch model with 32 gig of memory and a 1TB SSD hard drive. My motto has always been buy the best computer you can afford. So that's what I did. I'm a retired military and I used the Apple Military discount store which saves you 10 % off of the cost of the computer. I'm not going to quote the price but it's a lot ! But I think Mac's are worth the price because they last pretty long without having to replace. They very rarely have any software or virus problems. The only reason I'm replacing the one I have now is because it struggles with editing photo's. It also won't update to the newest Lightroom or Photoshop. But if I was using it for web surfing and writing my blogs it would still be a fine laptop to have. This new laptop should be lightning fast and be able to handle anything I throw at it.

Why I need it? I need it for mobile photography editing and backing up. I have been using a iPad pro with a M-1 chip in it and it works well but my eyes aren't as good as they used to be and I need the bigger screen. My main computing when not on the road is still my MacMini that has the M-2 chip in it and I have a 27 inch screen on it. If you've been following my blogs you know that I'm building an "Adventure Van" that I will take trips on and I need a laptop that I can depend on to edit and do research with while on the road.  This will be a perfect matchup with my Starlink mobile satellite dish. I'll be able to watch movies , do research on trips and edit and backup files while on the road. It has a battery life of up to 24 hours according to the Apple site. At any rate it will last a long time without charging and power management is important when traveling on the road. 

Well I'm writing this section about a week after the last paragraph and my computer has come in. Yay! I have migrated all of my stuff off of my old MacBook Pro and it went without any problems. I have wiped clean the older laptop and am donating it to a family member. My new laptop is set up and I'm using it right now to finish this blog. I've got most of it set up that I can and it's working great! Nice and fast and responsive like I expect it to do. I did get a Silver one although I loved the grey one that my older MacBook was but that color wasn't offered only black and silver and I didn't want a black one it reminded me of a work computer and I don't work anymore. The new computer does lots of neat stuff that I haven't even figured out yet but I will let you know how it works out. Well that's enough for this week. Until next week, Get out and Shoot!

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link