Pairing MBA with a Desktop

Hi Guys,

I've been primarily a PC user and have generally used ultra portable Sony Vaios (Vaio Z).

However, the newest Vaio Z will lack an internal Graphics card and runs about $1k more than an MBA.

Which got me thinking about the following scenario:

Using an MBA on the road/on the couch but having an iMac or something of the sort for graphic intensive endeavors (games, movie editing).

What I'd need is to be able to sync my documents/music/videos/email (I don't use web based mail) between the 2 computers.

Does anyone who has gone this route have any insight to whether their is practically advisable?

 

how graphics intensive or intensive of gaming?. if you want to run the new games on maximum or ultra with the eye candy enabled the iMac is still not a great choice as it uses a mobie GPU and not a full desktop card ( ok the 6970 is comparable to a low/midrange desktop GPU )

but most of the hardcore gaers in my family find it a little light over a full desktop 6800 or 6900 series or the GF 460+

 

^ Nothing too intensive.

The only games I ever play are Civilization and Starcraft II.

 

I sync content between all of my systems quite regularly though my system isn't automated. First, I use Gmail which can easily be accessed on every device I own so there is no need for me to sync content between them all when I can just pull up Gmail on every device. Second, I use Google Docs a lot and again, I can access that on every device I have whether it is through a web browser or dedicated app. So again, I don't really have to sync content as it is all accessible through my Google account and its online storage.

I then simply use my home network to wirelessly transmit video content or, if I don't feel like waiting, I simply plop the video content on a USB drive and copy/view it on multiple systems. I imagine things are going to change a little once iTunes On The Cloud is released. Then I would be able to access my iTunes music content on all of my iDevices and computers (my Droid X would be left in the dust but I have Google Music for that, which is proving itself to be quite the pain).

So it is possible to access content on multiple systems. I think the trickiest part would be your e-mail setup. You could even go with a NAS setup for storing your documents and media. It is essentially a hard drive configuration hooked up to your network and it can be viewed by systems running Mac OS X, Windows, and even Linux distress. It can be expensive setting one of these up and a little tricky but I feel that the reward is worth it.

On a side note, you shouldn't have issues running Starcraft II at higher settings on an iMac (or even a MBP, a MBA might even be able to run the game fine at its native resolution) so long as you are under Mac OS X. I cannot vouch for the Windows experience. I also can't speak for Civilization either but I would not expect any bad hangups to occur.

 

Take a look at Windows Live Mesh or SpiderOak for multi platform syncing.

 

What about Apple's cloud service?

 

That isn't out yet...