The Apple MacBook Air – 0.16 to 0.76 inch thin (that is VERY thin), a light 3 pounds, 13.3 inch screen (quite large for that size laptop), a peppy Core duo processor, 2 gigs or RAM, 802.11N wireless (the latest and greatest soon to be standard), and a 5 hour battery. Oh, and it runs the latest Mac operating system Leopard.
Details here – http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html
But is it worth checking out? Just by looking at the specs, I would say yes. They look great but can you afford it? Actually, yes, if you are looking for an ultra portable laptop that is. This one retails for about $1,700 when it hits the streets. Not bad at all for that breed of machine. Most other manufactures pushing their ultra portable laptops will be at least that amount and can be multiples of that price. But you will need to wait until they release it which should be in less than a month.
So why would I want one? Well if you want a Mac than you might definitely want one of these. If you want a Windows laptop, you might want one of these – it runs Leopard so you can install Windows on it and boot up in to Windows any time you want (and yes it works just like Windows should with nearly no gotchas at all). The specs are great and the visual styling is very appealing. More importantly, it is fast, has good battery life, and has a fairly large screen for that type of laptop (most have a 12.1 inch screen) and is light. All great combinations for a laptop.
So why would I not want one? Depending on how you want to use it, it is lacking in some areas. For one, it only has 1 USB port. I normally need only one, but will often want 2 or more ports, but OK I can pick up a small 4 port USB hub for $10 so maybe this is a moot point (if you do not mind carrying around another device). There is no built in optical drive. I don’t have that know and rarely use them anyway. It also does not have an Ethernet port. I know that is strange since all laptop and PC’s have these nowadays, but maybe they figure with the high speed 802.11N wireless, you do not need it. Maybe, but you can get yet another adaptor for Ethernet if you want. The hard drive is a bit slower than “normal” as well. Oh, and it does not have a removable battery. Then again, when was the last time you swapped batteries anyway.
Well am I getting one? Probably not, but I am very tempted. I use a tablet laptop that is light and small since I take it almost everywhere. It is about a year old and I’m not ready to give it up yet and I want the ability to write on the screen. If I had an older non-tablet laptop, I would probably go for it. I can be just as productive since I can still use Windows if/when needed and I would then have all of the upsides of the Mac and this appealing form factor.
This laptop is not for everyone, but like I said before, depending on how you work, this might be a great fit for you.
