[Review] MacBook Air

[tiagosilva29]

-Install/restore DVDs

I ****ing lol'ed.

[Huy]

You should mention some of these things KeR, which I think are very good aspects about the Air:

1. Very bright screen, LED backlit and glossy which is a plus or minus but I think it's a plus personally for my needs.

2. Illuminated backlit keyboard with ambient light sensor, makes the Air very nice to type on, feels good.

3. A little more about the multi-touch such as rotate, flick, pinch etc which is a novelty at first but can be very useful.

Enjoy your Air. :D

[bucko]

I had a bad experience with expensive laptops, I had an ?800 laptop for my 18th bday present reduced to a measly ?30 because it overheated, 2 months out of warranty. I dread to think what the heat issues are with this (although I have Core 2 Duo in my PC I'm sure that laptop gets a lot of heat). However nice review..

[stevehoot]

Good review - if a little short.

IMHO, it's a typical apple toy. Paying a lot more for the looks / PR than the guts inside it. Looks lovely, but for a portable laptop I'd grab a standard HP or Dell, save some cash and have more power inside.

For the same price you can get a HP 6910p with an Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, DVD+/-RW DL Optical Drive, stereo speakers, internal modem, FireWire, Media card reader, 3 USB ports, Ethernet, 14" TFT monitor and a 5400rpm 80Gb HD. Everything else is the same (obviously it has WiFi a/b/g, Bluetooth, 2Gb RAM etc.)

Dimensions are 2.9", 33.0 x 23.9 cm - so not as thin as the Air - but considering what you are getting for the same money that's a massive technical trade off for the sake of just 1cm.

[Beastage]

Is the thickness so important?! you have to remember in the end it goes into the same bag as a slightly thicker Dell XPS or a macbook ,the weight diffrence is nothing notable, the price is outragous.

At the end you won't feel its thinner and lighter, you will feel its weaker, slower and just not usable enough.

And another very big thing... how many people use their laptops as portable video players?! ALOT! everyone I know with a laptop , likes to watch DVD's from the optical drive, I have a feeling Apple aiming so that the only way their customers can get legit movies is via itunes and thats more food for thought.

And what is this none sense about enviroment friendly? all the sudden Apple are friendly? after being at the bottom for several years?

[Kushan]

I think it's kind of clear why this machine was the cause of a 33% price drop in Apple's shares (if not more).

I don't really see the point of it, it's like a bad cross between a truly portable device, akin to a PDA and a full laptop, but rather than mix the best of both worlds, it does neither job particularly well. It's too big and clunky for PDA style offerings and is missing far too many features for real laptop functionality (unless you want to pay more for the external drives, but then you may as well just buy a bloody laptop).

This just reminds me of origami all over again, except I think origami was a better idea and that still failed.

[evo_spook]

Yes, but it wasn't the cause of a 33% drop in Apples shares was it.

[Darkinspiration]

Well apple as always been a nice design compagny and the air reflect that. But sometimes they show that they don't understand the market as much as they would like. The air also reflect that.

Case in point:

The air is in the laptop categorie defined as ultraportable. Most ultraportable are used by frequent traveller. Be it by plane, boat or road. As such there is a few feature that are extremely important to them:

- Size

-weight

-readability

-Connectivity

-operating time

The air does not respond very well to the last two point. It lack any kind of pc card slot for a cellular connectivity card witch are popular with the traveler and it lack an ethernet jack to connect to place where wifi is not available. this could be fixed with more usb port but then you have to carry more junk around and you step on weight and size. As for operating time. well the air as a good battery true but what is truly hurting it is the fact that its not user replaceble making it impossible to swipe battery on the fly. or to easely replace a battery that is worn.

So the air is perfect if your not traveling economy, are not traveling outside of major urbain centers where wifi is everywhere and not to less develloped contry where power is not as available. In short the air is not a very good travelers laptop.

Still it's size and weight are impresive.

[Echilon]

Thanks for the review. (Y)

meh i'd still choose Eee PC over this...

I think I'd have to agree. The lack of optical drive is a serious blow, and that with the single USB port would stop me buying one.

[Rappy Veteran]

I am thinking of making this my purchase this year because I hope to travel later on in the year and want something light to carry around so your review is helpful :)

[Kushan]

Just keep in mind the amount of functionality you want to sacrifice for weight. You can get fully functional laptops that are just a little bit bigger, but still come with Disk drives, multiple USB ports, ethernet, PCMCIA slots, etc.

[NoneAvail]

Thanks for the review. The pictures are great.

[nekrosoft13]

not my taste, quite horrible

[Jbenisek]

XPS M1330 is so much better then this. Good job Dell you Rock. Sony tried this years ago and found that you loss to much and there needs to be a balance and this apple isn't it. It's nice to see the Dell has found a great balance.

Intel Core 2 Due 2.2

3GB max 4GB Ram

160GB at 7200 w/ Freefall

DVD burner

Video Cam

Fingerprint Scanner

4 pounds

13.3 1280 x 800(thin LCD backlit)

Check this out: How can you not have a video card?

http://gizmodo.com/345574/is-macbook-air-w...aptops-face-off

[whocares78]

Nice review although I hoped it would be a bit more in depth.

The Air is a nice machine, a nice proof of concept and imo an illustration of the future of notebooks.

But apple probably mostly aims on business people who are travelling whole days. These people aren't really represented here so discussing the actual usability of the Air in real situations is kinda pointless.

they are represented here, however most of them would use PC's mac's have never really been big in the business world

[bloodrain]

I'm not so sure Apple's build quality these days is "top notch." There were multiple problems with the Air, there are hundreds of issues with the MacBook, they've had issues with the iPod, etc. Their build quality has gone downhill the more popular they've gotten.

Also, I do believe the speaker is under the arrow keys, not the keyboard itself.

its not that its gone down hill, its just more people are experiencing problems (since more people use them now) and are making it know, they are having problems.