Apple Laptop poor travel companion? At issue: Lion Recovery

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Hey,

It's about time I replaced the dying Macbook Pro I've had for 5 years. And I'm about to embark on a 4-month bicycle trip across Central Africa, with a small laptop in tow. The 11" Macbook Air seemed like a great choice for portability and reliability and that good old Mac OS warm fuzzy feeling.

Seemed like it, UNTIL I just discovered it's impossible to restore Lion without an internet connection??? Can it really be true? The whole reason I am taking an entire laptop, rather that just a tablet like an iPad, is so that I can solve software issues should they arise. All the way up to fresh OS installation if necessary. (well plus a few other advantages like useability..)

Internet access is sparse and slow in Central Africa. Even in the cities, I'll be glad to be able to upload a few low res photos and blog entries, probably not much video to speak of. Downloading a hefty 4GB chunk of OS will, in the vast majority of places, likely be out of the question.

Does this mean I have to give up on taking an Apple computer with me? Sorry but I will sacrifice all the great things I know and love, that make Macs so much better than PC's, if I won't be able to service the darn thing should some problem arise.

Anyways, that's ridiculous, if it's really the case. Someone tell me it ain't so. lol. I was about to buy one.

Help?
 

CrimsonRequiem


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Your Mac's Specs
MBP 2.3 Ghz 4GB RAM 860 GB SSD, iMac 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7 32GB RAM, Fusion Drive 1TB
Either this or burn Lion to a disk but then you would need be an external super drive with you too.
 
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Hmm, that's what I thought, that I could just use the USB stick to reinstall if necessary, but one of the Q&A's for that product says it is not compatible with the current generation of MacBook Air. (This is actually where I learnt the unfortunate news)

I am starting to wonder whether maybe the person who answered the question was mistaken.

Can anyone confirm that it is possible to reinstall Lion onto a current-generation MacBook Air using the USB stick and no internet connection?

Is it also possible to create a bootable install disk on a hard drive / thumb drive, rather than a cd? If so I could make my own USB stick if I wanted, instead of buying their expensive one... I will not be carrying an optical drive.

Thanks a lot.
 

cwa107


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14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD

cwa107


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I guess I have to wonder what your concerns are in terms of recoverability. You do have an SSD after-all. It's not like solid state components are prone to failure. OS X doesn't need to be reinstalled as a maintenance measure like Windows does. So, I guess I don't understand your concern to begin with?
 

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