Macbook Pro - or Air... so confused!

p4girl

As the computer geek of the school, I've often brought home my school macbook to do work, but my LA has said this is no longer to happen.

SO - I either do no work at home of an evening (best choice! - but impractical) or bite the bullet and buy a mac. Visited apple store today - thought I wanted Macbook Pro, but should never have gone near the Macbook Air ... loved it!

However, clear head on - am I right in thinking that all my Appleworks documents will be useless with the new i-works? (They are mostly drawing pages.)

Also, I back up my work to an LG portable hard drive, but I notice the Macbook Air has 1 USB port each side - and the hard drive is powered by TWO USB connections going into the computer, side by side. Is there any way round that? The Pro seems to win that one as it has 2 USB ports together.

Oh dear, head or heart to win????

Enterprise_1701C

No idea about apples - but a way around the hard drive problem, simply get hold of a couple of USB extension leads, probably get them quite cheaply off Ebay. I say a couple because I am guessing it might be a good idea to have both leads the same length but I may well be wrong!

magyar

Firstly I love the fact that the LA is rewarding your unpaid evening work by not letting you use their property at home and making you buy your own. Way to keep people motivated...

Your LG hard drive will probably work with just the one USB - the two USB solution is just for certain old computers with lower voltages I think - what I suggest is taking it to an Apple store and trying it.

To me this decision comes down to how much of a hassle it would be to you to have minimal HD space. If you can live with the far smaller amount you get on an Air, then go with it. But since I manage to fill up all 500GB on my MB Pro's disk, I could never manage it...

The other differentiators are obvious: if you will benefit from the lightness of the Air, if you travel a lot etc., then it's a benefit, but the Pro does have more speed.

p4girl

Thank you both! USB extension leads - brilliant!

My colleagues, I have to say, are none too thrilled by the new rules - we realise there could be data protection implications, (someone may well hack into my computer from home to find whether or not wee Jane wears glasses...) but the implications at report writing time are horrendous!

None of us keep sensitive data about the children on our USB drives, it's all done in school on a different system with an encryped pen drive.

I have been a little seduced by the Air, especially as I read Apple are now trying to slim down the Pro... I guess I could learn how to do documents on the new Pages programme... maybe I'll claim the hours as professional development training!

magyar

Sorry I just realised I ignored the point about Appleworks. Pages (the iWork word processor) will open most Appleworks packages, and is very reasonably priced at £13.99