System Administrator and Spring Hill College graduate who loves all things tech. If it has a flashing LED it has my immediate attention.

Jun 26, 2016

Thinking about my Next Computer

So, I’ve been thinking lately about selling my 27" 5K iMac to acquire a new laptop. It was my dream for years in high school and college to have a really powerful desktop. Upon graduation, I got an apartment and eventually acquired the desktop of my dreams, a 5k iMac. The screen is big and brilliant, all solid state storage, and fast for everything that I use it for, which is writing, photography, working from home, and VM Ware Fusion testing. It really is an amazing desktop and I do really enjoy using it when I do use it, but that’s the biggest problem. When I’m at work I use my work-issued 15" Macbook Pro and when I’m at home I’m on my iPad a lot since I can watch TV, play with my cat, and use it at the same time. Unless I’m working on a project over the weekend or working on some maintenance from home I find that the iMac is sleeping 70% of the time. I really like the iMac, but it grinds against my Catholic guilt more roughly than wearing a swim trunks made out of sandpaper on a waterslide at a Disney Water park.

I do also enjoy getting out of the apartment on weekends. In fact, this entire Medium post was writing in a Panera Bread this afternoon. Also, I live most of my digital life in the cloud with iCloud Photo Library/Google Photos, Apple Music/Spotify free, Feedly, Chrome, Twitter, Office, etc. So, like most geeks I like to have a powerful laptop, I probably do not need one nearly as powerful as I think I need. Right now the two laptops on my short-list are the 12' Macbook and 15' Macbook Pro. I feel torn between these two drastically different machines.

The Case for the Macbook

The Macbook is like an iPad Pro 9.7' turned into a laptop. No moving parts, ultra-thin, long battery life, single-port, etc. I found the machine light enough and battery long enough the weekend that I used it that I only charged it up at night as opposed to every few hours. It was light enough that I could sit on the couch or go to a coffee shop and work away. Most of my work now as a system admin consists of email, a terminal, remote desktop, and a web browser.

My work machine is really the servers that I maintain

The biggest crux of the Macbook is whether or not I can live the wireless life. Sure, you can get enough dongles for the Macbook to make any normal person uncomfortable, but I feel like half the point of the Macbook is to get away from wires.

When I’m at work I have every single port on my Macbook Pro used, but when I’m at home I never plug anything into it. I guess growing up building Windows PCs the idea of having zero ports in a pinch kind of scares me.

The Case for the Macbook Pro

Oh, the Macbook Pro. I have a 2013 15" Macbook Pro from work and I used a 15" Macbook Pro in college. For the last 8 years the Macbook Pro has been my constant companion and most loved computer. It has the ports I need, plenty of power, the best trackpad I’ve ever used, a big keyboard, an amazing screen, and a decent battery for a workstation-style laptop. The only problem with the Macbook Pro is the battery is just ok for home use and its big enough that you do not really want to use it away from a desk. I like the Macbook Pro, but its big enough that I end up only using it at home for work-related tasks.

iPad Factor

I’ve always wanted a pen for the iPad ever since I was in college

That being said, I do have an iPad Air as well and wonder if I could get by with an iPad Pro 9.7" and just stick with the iMac. I use the iPad Air for a lot of reading, email, photos, writing, and multimedia. Right now my biggest problem with my current iPad Air is the storage space and processor just cannot keep up when I’m trying to work on a bunch of stuff at the same time. Its the storage issue and processor that really makes handling iCloud photo library a chore on the iPad Air. I feel like I’m so close to the storage limit most of the time that my iPad never had the photos I want on it locally for Pixelmator to edit. That being said, nothing beats full-Chrome or Safari. There the Macbook definitely has the iPads beat.

Conclusion

I’m not sure where I’m going to go with this decision, but in typical fashion I sense I’m going to hem and haw about this for a couple of weeks longer before making a decision. External factors like a new Macbook Pro release being imminent are also weighing on my mind. I have looked into other options like the Dell XPS 13/15 and Dell/HP Chromebooks, but I do use prefer the Apple ecosystem/hardware to Microsoft’s at the end of the day and I find that I do not live deep enough in Google’s ecosystem to really take advantage of the Chromebook’s features. I like Apple’s multimedia apps more than Google’s despite iTunes being a dumpster fire. Its funny how in 2016 Apple there are so many more choices today than ever before. I feel like I’m pretty decent at recommending computers for others, but when it comes to my own computing needs I struggle deeply with it.

I do apologize if this was a rambling and boring post. Just some internal thoughts I have been bouncing back and forth the last month in my head and felt like if I put them down on Medium it would help me come to a decision or maybe somebody would have a good point or suggestion to push me one way or another. -HH