Can you work from home on Macbook Air (or should I get an iMAC?)

[PsuedoSatisfactionBaby]

Been told to expect to be working from home for the forseeable future - I have a 10 year end old macbook air which is fabulous but very much now a family computer so not much storage left and I'm not sure I could spend 8 hours a day working on it. Used to desktop in the office.

I know I'll have to replace the macbook air at some point probably in the not too distant future but was wondering if I should get an iMac now instead.....any thoughts?

Try it and see?

Get an iMac. I adore mine and it makes work so much easier and more efficient.

Having said that, my local Apple Store is now closed (I’m in the US)...

I work full time from home on a 27 inch iMac with an extra 21 inch monitor attached, so I find the idea of 8 hours staring at a MacAir horrible - But DD1 uses a 15inch MacAir as her main device for study and research and manages fine. Do you need to have more than one screen open at once (eg a web page andWord file, or two docxs)? That's a huge factor in the practicality.

My experience of macs is they aren't so good with Microsoft packages. But you get used to one way of working don't you.

Lizzie - certain functions were decidedly ropey on older versions of Word for Mac (looking at you, 2011) notably tables, footnotes and comments. But I now have 365 and it's fab, smooth as butter.

I have a MacBook Pro (smaller than an air) and connect a separate screen and keyboard.

You could also look at connecting an external drive to the Air to expand the storage. But really if it’s 10 years old I think you’ll be astonished at how much faster a new iMac works. Mine has 4Tb of storage compared to my Air which has 256Gb.

Just use a 2nd screen.

Get a new faster laptop and a cheap large monitor to plug it into.

That way you still have the portability of the laptop.

That said I work 8 hours on a 15inch mac pro without a monitor with no issue. Though I'm considering getting a portable stand to help my posture

i have a macbook air and could work from home on it with a external mouse id be fine
mine is only 5 years old tho and is actually faster than my works computer

I’ve got a MacBook Pro and it’s looking likely we’ll be getting the order to work from home next week, so that’s what I’ll be using. It’s going to be a pain going from my two screen PC to a laptop but I have all the MS office packages so it will do.

Though I’ve been writing my dissertation on it and that has taught me I definitely need to get a mouse for it!

I use a Mac book air for portability and plug it into a 27" monitor when working from home for two screens.

Surely your work should be sorting equipment to work from home?

I wfh most of the time anyway on a MacBook Air and find it fine, as most docs are google shared anyway. It’s about 6 years old and has no storage but not any issue. I also use a laptop in the office on the rare occasion I go in! You get used to it and then it becomes preferable!

@BennyVegas

My work has 3,500 admin staff so there’s no way they could give us all laptops. Senior management sent out an email on Thursday asking everyone to confirm if they have a computer and internet access at home.

My husband's workplace put people in taxis with their desktop machines and screens on Friday!

My experience of macs is they aren't so good with Microsoft packages.

I don't think that's true as much these days - hell I use MS Word on my iPad Pro (with the keyboard folio attached though) and it's just fine for 99% of stuff - selecting text to format is a pain but that's a touchscreen thing, and there are actually functions where I'll start typing a document on my windows laptop and then swap to the iPad as the functionality is better for what I'm doing on there (all hail the Apple Pencil God).