The new Macbook Air has been out for a little while now. I have been using mine for about one month. So, here is my thoughts on this thin little beauty.
I have always been a consumer of laptops. In the literal sense of the word. Over the last number of years I have been one of these people that gets a new laptop every 2-3 yrs. I would use a Macbook then sell it for the new latest and greatest. Luckily they hold their value pretty good.
Over the years I have used the white MacBook, a MacBook Pro 13" and 15". My previous thinking each time I upgraded was I wanted faster processor, graphics and more memory. I would inevitably upgrade their ram and hard drive almost without fail.
Before getting the MacBook Air 13", I had a MacBook Pro 13". The specs on the Pro were 2.26 GHz, 4 GB Ram and a 500gb HD. A very nice machine in it's own right.
However, after using my iPad since they debuted, I started to wonder. Do I really need the power, memory and sized hard drive of the aforementioned MacBook Pro? The answer was NO! After all, I was only using 40gb of that 500gb hard drive. Additionally, I was only using the Pro at work for certain tasks, mostly word processing(MS Office) and browsing.
So, I had decided to sell my old Pro model. About this same time the New MacBook Air debuts. Hmmm, I thought maybe this Air would fit the bill. I researched, read reviews, and went to the Apple Store repeatedly to contemplate this new line.
Ok, Ok get to what you bought already! I ended up purchasing the base 13" MacBook Air 1.86GHz, 2gb Ram, 128gb hd it retails for $1299. It comes with two USB ports, SD card slot, and a mini display port. No ethernet, but you can get a USB to ethernet dongle. I did not choose to upgrade to the 4gb model. Rare for me! After using the 2gb version in store for a while, it seems this model would be fine.
After using my Air for about a month now, I LOVE IT! It really fits the needs that I have for a laptop computer. Which as stated above, my needs were basic office tasks(word, excel, outlook), browsing, and online tasks for work. As most of my golf course tasks are now web based. Such as payroll, HR, billing, and documents.
I find it to perform as Apple has promised in terms of speed. Start up and loading apps is plenty quick due to the Flash based hard drive. It plays video very nice. Whether it is from Hulu, Netflix, Vimeo, or the hard drive.
I do not do much video or audio editing, so I cannot comment on how this Air would handle this tasks. However, I have read a number of articles by people claiming they have tried to us the Air for video and audio with success. Via apps like Adobe CS, iMovie, etc.
At first I was concerned the 128gb was going to be filled in no time flat. As I write this I am using about 30gb of storage on the MBA. I don't store many photos, movies, or videos on this machine. Those items are stored on iOS devices or my iMac. The use of cloud based storage like DropBox, iDisk(MobileMe user), Evernote, Box.net also helps to eliminate the need for large hard drives on laptops. It frees up your hard drive for the stuff you really want.
Also, the lack of an optical drive turns some people away. However, I did not realize until researching the Air that you can share a drive via your home network from a separate PC or Mac. Problem solved as far as I am concerned. I have loaded at least 6 different types of software using this method and it worked great.
If you are someone who really needs to runs windows apps then you could de that as well. I have watched videos of Windows7 and XP running on a Air via bootcamp or Parallels. Although, you may want the fully loaded Air version to give you the best performance for these applications.
Here is a list of most of the apps installed on my MBA:
iWork 09
MS Office 2011 Mac
iLife 11
Evernote
Bento 3
1 Password
iTunes 10
BusyCal
FaceTime
iShowU HD
If you are looking for a lightweight, quick, durable, long battery life laptop, take a look at the line of 2010 MacBook Air.
www.apple.com/Mac
- Posted from my iPad
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