Netbooks
My laptop is having troubles, and I really want to try out a netbook and go back to linux fulltime. But there's some issues using it as my primary/travelling laptop, all related to my photography habits, and my need to be able to handle photos when I'm travelling:
(a) Linux does not have good tools for handling RAW images. You pretty much have to convert to JPG and work from there, and that's not really an acceptable alternative in my opinion. I wish I had time to write the libraries myself, but that's not an option while I'm working on my PhD thesis.
(b) Netbooks don't generally have enough power to do what John does, which is use a windows VM for lightroom so he can handle raw images under linux. Heck, batch handling my photos natively in lightroom pushes this MacBook, and it's a 2G Core Duo with 2G of ram.
(c) I'd really love to have a solid state drive, because I kill hard drives at a rate of 1 per year and I want to see if that helps, but I shoot 4g of photos per day sometimes.
But despite those problems and me trying to talk myself out of it, the fact is I still *want* a netbook. And a friend pointed out that I can treat it more as a big PDA at those base prices. I can probably afford it *and* replace this macbook if need be. (I overbudget on laptop replacement and always have money set aside just in case.)
So, for those of you who have them: how do you like them? Do any of you use multiple laptops? Do any of you do basic photography work with them? Any annoying gotchas? Do they spin up external hard drives ok so I could just dump photos on one of my little backup travel drives? Is that screen size/resolution just too tiny to work on?
(a) Linux does not have good tools for handling RAW images. You pretty much have to convert to JPG and work from there, and that's not really an acceptable alternative in my opinion. I wish I had time to write the libraries myself, but that's not an option while I'm working on my PhD thesis.
(b) Netbooks don't generally have enough power to do what John does, which is use a windows VM for lightroom so he can handle raw images under linux. Heck, batch handling my photos natively in lightroom pushes this MacBook, and it's a 2G Core Duo with 2G of ram.
(c) I'd really love to have a solid state drive, because I kill hard drives at a rate of 1 per year and I want to see if that helps, but I shoot 4g of photos per day sometimes.
But despite those problems and me trying to talk myself out of it, the fact is I still *want* a netbook. And a friend pointed out that I can treat it more as a big PDA at those base prices. I can probably afford it *and* replace this macbook if need be. (I overbudget on laptop replacement and always have money set aside just in case.)
So, for those of you who have them: how do you like them? Do any of you use multiple laptops? Do any of you do basic photography work with them? Any annoying gotchas? Do they spin up external hard drives ok so I could just dump photos on one of my little backup travel drives? Is that screen size/resolution just too tiny to work on?