![the wirecutter camera the wirecutter camera](https://cdn.thewirecutter.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/action-cameras-lowres-921556.jpg)
It comes in handy (a) when doing a lot of shit at once on your computer and (b) when I want to watch Netflix or whatever from my bed. So I ordered a Dell UltraSharp U2413M ($265) based solely on the Wirecutter’s article.
![the wirecutter camera the wirecutter camera](https://cdn.thewirecutter.com/wp-content/media/2020/12/actioncams2020-2048px-0347-2x1-1.jpg)
At work I’ve got three monitors, but at home I figured one additional screen would be fine (my apartments then and now couldn’t have fit a 2nd external monitor, plus the Air can really only handle one external monitor). If there’s one thing I’ve learned about using computers, it’s that you can never have enough screen real estate. At one point I was running 11 programs at once (to wit: Chrome, Safari, Adium, iTunes, TextEdit, Excel, Word, Cyberduck, Sublime Text 2, iTerm, Preview), flying between windows, browsers, and emails. A week or two ago I was working from home creating an interactive for work. I can’t remember what ultimately swayed me in the end, but eventually I got a 13"Air with 128 GB of storage and 8 GB of RAM (the standard is 4 GB of RAM, but for an extra $100 I wanted to ensure no lagging) for $1200.Ī year and a half later I’ve never gotten a pinwheel-of-death or had to forcefully restart it. Did the Air have enough computing power for all the shit I wanted to do? What about this flash memory? I had a LaCie external hard drive at the time, so storage space wasn’t a major concern. Using the Wirecutter’s review as a starting point, I did a fair amount of research comparing the limited Mac laptop options.
![the wirecutter camera the wirecutter camera](https://cdn.thewirecutter.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/actioncamera-lowres-1010155-630x420.jpg)
It was time to be a big boy and use my real income to buy a computer. It was a beast and I had been through a lot with it, but it was getting slow, plus it weighed a ton.
#The wirecutter camera pro
In spring of 2012 I was still rocking a 17" Macbook Pro from college.