Vortex, I've had this for traveling with since last summer, and it has worked out very well. The keyboard is a little cramped -- it takes me a day or so to make the adjustment from my regular full-sized keyboard, but after that it's all good.

I got this instead of a netbook for three reasons: 1) screen size, 2) keyboard size -- the netbook keyboards were just too cramped, and 3) 4Gb RAM, plus an SD card slot I can use for quick expansion if I really need to.

Okay, I love the new MacBook Pro, but I *loathe* iPhoto '11. When you edit a photo in an external editor (like any iteration of Photoshop, for instance), iPhoto immediately makes a duplicate of your original photo and then keeps it in the iPhoto finder window, next to the edited version. Not only does this bloat the hell out of my photo library (I edit almost all my photos), but visually it's a fucking nightmare. It's not user-friendly at all.

Any Mac users who manage their photos in something other than the shambling horror that is iPhoto '11 -- what do you use?

I'm thinking of just using the Finder and manually managing a hierarchy of folders. And opening things in Preview when I want to just look at them.

(Apparently iPhoto '09 was bad but didn't do this duplication thing. Well, it *did,* but it just stowed the duplicates in folders but didn't make them appear in the iPhoto window. But since I kept the trusty iBook for 6 years, I jumped from iPhoto '05 [or possibly '06] right to this nonsense. I'm half-tempted to see if I can kludge iPhoto '05 onto the MBP.)

I don't use Iphoto at all. Anything I need to do (which is 100% rotation and cropping), I do in Preview.

Do you have an iphone or ipad? The Photosync app is cheap and a marvel.

When you import photos, do you just import them into folders, in a hierarchy/structure that works for you? (Versus when I import into iPhoto, it creates folders by date, but in iPhoto '11, they're arcane and EXTREMELY difficult to navigate. There's a whole structure thing going on there that I can't even comprehend. Someone actually wrote the software to do what it does. That boggles.)

I edit my stuff in Photoshop, but I really liked the old iPhoto (as it turns out, it's iPhoto '05) for organizing them visually.

Kind of the way iTunes has gotten more and more complex (some would say needlessly so), apparently so has iPhoto. Big ol' dislike here.

I have an iPod Touch, which I'm assuming I can use the Photosync app on. I'll go check it out.

You have much more complicated needs for photos than I do because I barely use the photo function except for wallpapers and screenshots. So I import them to the mac, manipulate them as I need to and them send them off somewhere. I am not keeping most of the photos. So I don't need an organizing scheme of any note.

I do put them in folders for small projects, but I don't need more than that.

But yes, my photos are organized the way photosync does it, by name of ios device in the photosync folder in Photos. If you want, you can have photosync use Iphoto or something else, but I'm find with the Finder.

I use Picasa for my photo management needs, and have it call up Gimp if I need to go very flashy. It's handling thousands and thousands of pictures very easily--categorisation is a flash with the facial recognition.

Picasa on Mac, ita? My searches of the interwebs using phrases like "replacement for iPhoto '11" keep turning up Picasa. I might give it a shot.

Yep, Steph. It's pretty sweet.

Cool. Im'a try it out.

ita, doesn't Picasa install some additional software that people didn't like?