# Smallest lightest notebook to travel with LR on a month trip



## rjalex (Apr 15, 2011)

Dear friend,
have been courting the idea of  buying a Macbook AIR to bring along in my camera gear backpack wo have LR and do the little I do while traveling: importing every night, discarding, rating, tagging, zooming and maybe some CR2 to JPG conversion of those pics that will not have any other value to me than a memory to limit storage space.

Any experience of running LR 3 on a MAB for this type of limited task ? Other non Mac options that would compete well ?

I am not loooking for performace, just feasibility. There was an 11" MBA with 2GB RAM and 64GB SSD for 350 up on sale. Am a little nervous about the 64GB only though (shoot with a Canon 5Dmk2 with 22MB files a pop). Also the pixel count of the 11" leaves me a bit nervous.

Just to reiterate the REAL postprocessing will be done back home on my 27" iMac.

Thanks for any opinions.


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## Replytoken (Apr 15, 2011)

While the MBA is a good choice, Acer has a model 1830T in their Timeline X series with an 11-inch screen and iCore processor that is reasonably small and light. Lenovo is supposed to be releasing their X220 with an IPS panel. And, Sony has several models like their Y and YB series.

Good luck,

--Ken


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 15, 2011)

I keep a 500gb laptop hard drive in a small enclosure, and use that for image files, backed up to a 2nd one.  In that scenario, main drive size isn't a major issue for me, so probably isn't an immediate reason to exclude it.  I've been tempted by the ultra-portable machines but never got any further, so I'm not much more help with that, sorry!


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## edgley (Apr 16, 2011)

I had a Gen1 MBA.
A very nice machine, but by no way quick.

I would think you would do well to try LR on an Air before going that route.
There is always the 13" MBP...


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## rjalex (Apr 28, 2011)

Sorry for the late reply but had my PC well closed at home while egg hunting with my kids for Easter ! 

I might not have managed to convey the principal requirement I have : WEIGHT (and a secondary which is storage).

I will always travel with my camera in the cabin and the weight of my camera gear is such that every time I need to take painful decisions and leave some elements home.

I NEED a PC to tag, select, discard/rate my pics every night since my 32GB CF cards get often filled daily (and sometimes in less than that) by my full frame raws. In other words I'd use LR LIBRARY module only every night.

So I'd settle for the lightest possible PC that can decently import 20 30 GB of raws every night (even in 30 mins or so while I take a shower  ) and let me tag/rate/discard at a human pace.

I think I would be forced to go for the (OMG expensive 256GB SSD model) because for weekly shooting + nightly culling it should be enough.

An external USB would be a good idea to copy to while importing and then that would travel in the undercarriage suitcase in the tragic case of less/theft of the backpack (I would grieve but survive the loss of my gear but would be shattered by the loss of the images).

Thanks to all. Probably my best option would be trying to install LR3 trial on a 2GB and then a 4GB MBA and see what it gives on a small batch of 100 or so raws.

Bob


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 29, 2011)

Do let us know how you get on them Bob!


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