Laptop for travel and desktop for home. Options?

I need lightness and portability, don't mind external storage and virtual backup, and still want a desktop. I will treat the laptop roughly and subject it to high temperatures and humidity. Restricted funds preclude buying a desktop too. What about the newest 11" Air plus a monitor? Agreement? Dissent? Problems anticipated? Other suggestions?

imac is crashing on loading

My late 2011 imac is crashing on the loading screen about 1/3 of the way in. I had issues with it back in 2013 and ended up replacing the harddrive with an ssd. I'm not sure if the new hard drive has a recovery partition.

I tried to follow online instructions to boot into safe mode but it doesn't seem to work. I tried to hold shift after the startup sound but it doesn't do anything.

Is there anything I can do?

Thanks.

iTunes Says I Have More Photos Than I Really Do

Okay, I have a 5th generation, 16 gig iPod Touch that has iOS 8.1.0. I have a fairly recent version of iTunes. I recently deleted over 1000 photos off my iPod and also deleted them out of the Recently Deleted section. (Note: I also have the photo streaming thing turned off.) When I plug my iPod into my computer, it still says that I have over 2000 pictures that are taking up 4 gigs of space on my iPod! Please help me, as this is very irritating and I cannot find any other solutions. :-)

Why does Spotlight pick the DVD Player app when I enter the math equation 5*3?

I only use Spotlight for quick math. Because of that, I decided to modify my Spotlight preferences (System Preferences -> Spotlight -> Search Results) to only show results for Conversion and Calculator (everything else is unchecked).

However, when I enter the equation 5*3 it picks the DVD Player app. Note that if I do 5 * 3 (with added spaces) it shows the calculator results, which is what I desire. So far, only 5*3 triggers the DVD Player app.

I'm guessing Spotlights results are cached, and it's just using the cached results. Long story short: when trying to get Spotlight to show only calculator results, I unchecked everything in Spotlight's preferences except for Calculator. However, then Spotlight didn't work at all, even for simple equations. I tried to tinker, and checked Applications, and entered 5*3 and hit enter, assuming the Calculator would be used, but instead the DVD Player app was opened. I unchecked Applications and checked Conversion, which made the calculator work. But now 5*3 results in the DVD Player app opening, not the calculator.

Is my hunch that Spotlight caches its results correct? If so, how long is this cache valid for (i.e. when will 5*3 result in the calculator being used instead of the DVD Player)?

Simple screen capture:

Airdrop ios 8.2 to yosemite 10.10.2

I am trying to copy a photo that I just took with the ipad and I can't use airdrop. Is this a restriction from ios and osx?

Playing back a buffer of float values as audio

I am new to iOS programming and am trying to manipulate some audio characteristics of an audio file which requires the audio data as float values which am able to successfully obtain.

I am stuck on how to play back that float values as audio data. I investigated a lot of iOS frameworks using its documentation but most of them do not allow me to work on float data. Its mostly reading and playing back audio files & controlling some playback parameters.

In short:

Objective: Playback a buffer/array of float values (originally audio data) as audio.

Overall Process:Audio File -> Read to float buffer (done) -> manipulate (can do) -> playback as audio (do not want to store as file)

Apologies if the question is very naive. All help is appreciated. Thanks.

Songs deleted from iTunes Library after synced into iPhone(5)

Heard a song on my iPhone where, because of the size of my Library, iTunes auto selected about 2,600 songs. Heard a song that I wanted to add to a playlist. But when I went to iTunes Library, it wasn't there. Then I discovered a number (don't know total yet) were missing. How is this possible? Did transferring the songs from computer to device do this?

I have other problems with iTunes: making duplicates, creating new folders, some tunes can't be located so don't play but next or two or three times after re-opening iTunes they resume being able to be played. Don't get it.