New to Apple, help needed to define a home network

[Beefcake4000]

Hello all, apologies if this in the wrong location.

I have recently bought a Macbook Air (6.2) to replace a 5 year old HP laptop and I'm sold on Apple, the difference is night and day. The HP laptop was very well specced; i7, 8Gb Ram, 1 TB HDD but it can't touch the Air for everyday performance. I'm not a heavy user but I do expect it to 'work' when I want to use it, not having to keep reconnecting this or reconfiguring that etc etc.

I'm now looking to convert the whole house (hopefully not in one go) to Apple because I want everything talking to each other; however I have to accept that no matter how much I convince myself I'm tech-savvy, I'm actually a dinosaur. I haven't quite got to the point of asking my 2 year old for help, but its only a matter of time!

The problem:

Between my wife and I, we take lots of pictures of the children and want to securely save them in a single easily accesible point that we can then print etc whatever we want to do with them. My wife has a Samsung S8 phone, crumbling HP laptop and an Ipad, I have a Huawei P20 Pro Macbook Air and a self built desktop CAD station/gaming PC. The plan was to use the CAD station as a central storage location; upload the phones to the CAD Station and sort pictures into folders then view on the laptops/ipad, but the WiFi signal is weak and keeps dropping out and its a monster to keep on all the time.

I'd like to replace my wifes laptop, probably with a Macbook Air similar to mine and potentially the CAD Station (which rarely gets used to its capacity) with an iMac or a Mac Mini that can be on all the time, silently with minimal power use. Maybe then also something like a Time Capsule as the WiFi Hub and additional back-up.

Will this give the kind of free movement of images wirelessly I'm looking for? Neither of us are power users, laptop work is mostly email, ebay/amazon and general internet useage, I don't do CAD work at home any more so the need for such a machine is less important. Its really about keeping images of the children safe as they grow up.

I've also got an Apple TV which would be good to sync with a base unit for stored/DVD childrens movies and the ubiquitous Peppa frickin Pig.

I hope my question makes sense, I'll certainly have forgotten some vital piece of information but any help offered will be much appreciated.

Thanks in Advance.

 

[ferrarr]

Welcome to our community, and the Apple eco-system.

Just as an FYI, going from the HP to the MBA, you went from a standard HDD to an SSD, which is a big step in performance. Your MBA is a 2013-2014 model. See here, https://everymac.com, as it lists all Mac models.

As long as you organize your pictures now and going forward (please don't forget to backup all your important data) then you will always be able to set things up the way you want in the future, as you streamline your setup.

 

[MacInWin]

I know you want to go more Apple-centric, but you might consider getting a NAS (Network Attached Storage) storage device. Something like a WD MyCloud (I have two and they work well for me, although others may have differences of opinion on WD.) or any NAS of your choice. Then put the NAS into your network near the router, preferably by ethernet cable to get the best bandwidth. Now your devices should be able to see and use the NAS, so put your shared files (pictures, whatever) on the NAS. Even when you do get your new Macs in place, they can also see and use the NAS, so you haven't lost anything and you aren't dependent on the iMac to be your server.

Here is a link to a review of what's out there. You can also search for NAS and get plenty of advice. https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/mac/best-nas-drives-mac-3674321/