- Joined
- Dec 30, 2004
- Messages
- 876
- Reaction score
- 4
I recieved my macbook air yesterday. After a whole day of playing with it these are my initial impressions:
The air looks absolutely beautiful. I thought I would find the black keys on aluminum a bit tacky, but I actually like it. I absolutely loved the backlit keyboard, hopefully Apple will incorporate it into future versions of the macbook. The aluminum enclosure is very nice with surprisingly little heat. My friends black macbook gets much hotter than the air. With a 13.3" display the air has the same "footprint" as the macbook. The difference is when you compare them side by side. I always liked the style of the macbook, but when placed next to a macbook air, they look HUGE and bloated. It really is that thin!
The aluminum body feels very, very tight. Although it is so thin I can actually pick it up from a corner and feel absolutely no bending or warping, the thing is solid as a rock. I would never have dared to do that with my older IBM Thinkpad. In regards to weight, those 2 pounds do make a differnce.
The operating system was pretty responsive, as it should be with 2 Gb of RAM. It took Office 2008 from 5 to 8 seconds to open (yes, I timed it too 🙂). I was pretty surprised at how zippy and responsive the laptop is considering that I ordered the base 1.6 GHz model. It is pretty much on par with the macbook. I wouldnt recommend it for gaming, 3D modeling or HD decoding, but it should be more than enough for normal computing needs.
The screen is a 13.3" LED backlit which is brighter than the macbook version (which is LCD not LED). When I open the case it instantly turns on which is nice. i am not a fan glossy screens, but so far it hasnt bothered me much. The new multi- touch gestures of the trackpad are pretty intuitive. Those of you with an ipod touch or an iphone will be right at home. If you have never used an iphone dont worry, they are easy to learn. My sister who has never handled an iphone got the hang of it pretty quickly and loved it.
My biggest worry when buying the macbook were the reports of non replacable battery and puny hard drive (the SSD option at $999 is waaay to expensive for me). Fortunately this doesnt seem to be the case at all. Reports from mac sites demonstrate that the battery is actually pretty easy to replace, as all you need is a screwdriver. With this in mind, its only a matter of time before third party replacement batteries are available. Removing the hard drive takes a little more work, but its definately doable. The only problem is that the largest size comaptible 1.8" HDD available is precisely 80 Gb. This shouldnt be a problem as SSD drive prices are falling more and more every day, with reports saying that their prices should rive HDD prices by the end of this year/ early next year.
The "lack" of features is probably not going to be as big a problem as I thought. In all the years I have had my Thinkpad laptop, I probably burned less than 10 CD's/ DVD's. If I do find the need to burn a CD/ DVD I already have my 24" iMac as my primary desktop computer for that. When transfering files I mainly use my trusty 4 Gb USB drive which is more than enough. I installed Office 2008 using remote disk, which is an application that permits the macbook to "borrow" the disk drive from another computer to unstall apps. It worked as advertised, Office 2008 installed without any problems whatsoever.
The speaker sounded ok as it is mono, but as with any laptop I recommend using the headphone jack. The air also has a built in isight camera on top of the screen, it worked great. The one thing that I really missed was a firewire port. The external hard drive I use to back up my info and store my movies is firewire only, which means I am going to be forced to shell out some money for a USB external hard drive for use with my macbook air. Other than that the other "missing" features would most likely not be missed at all.
So after playing with the macbook air for more than a day I have to say I am pretty happy with it. One thing to keep in mind is that the macbook air is NOT meant to be used as a primary computer. If you decide to buy one I recommend you at least have a decent desktop for you primary computing needs. In the end I believe that Apple always meant for the macbook air to be used as a second computer, where portability was more important.
I know this was a bit long winded, but I hope it gives you all a better idea of what you are getting into if you decide to get a macbook air.
The air looks absolutely beautiful. I thought I would find the black keys on aluminum a bit tacky, but I actually like it. I absolutely loved the backlit keyboard, hopefully Apple will incorporate it into future versions of the macbook. The aluminum enclosure is very nice with surprisingly little heat. My friends black macbook gets much hotter than the air. With a 13.3" display the air has the same "footprint" as the macbook. The difference is when you compare them side by side. I always liked the style of the macbook, but when placed next to a macbook air, they look HUGE and bloated. It really is that thin!
The aluminum body feels very, very tight. Although it is so thin I can actually pick it up from a corner and feel absolutely no bending or warping, the thing is solid as a rock. I would never have dared to do that with my older IBM Thinkpad. In regards to weight, those 2 pounds do make a differnce.
The operating system was pretty responsive, as it should be with 2 Gb of RAM. It took Office 2008 from 5 to 8 seconds to open (yes, I timed it too 🙂). I was pretty surprised at how zippy and responsive the laptop is considering that I ordered the base 1.6 GHz model. It is pretty much on par with the macbook. I wouldnt recommend it for gaming, 3D modeling or HD decoding, but it should be more than enough for normal computing needs.
The screen is a 13.3" LED backlit which is brighter than the macbook version (which is LCD not LED). When I open the case it instantly turns on which is nice. i am not a fan glossy screens, but so far it hasnt bothered me much. The new multi- touch gestures of the trackpad are pretty intuitive. Those of you with an ipod touch or an iphone will be right at home. If you have never used an iphone dont worry, they are easy to learn. My sister who has never handled an iphone got the hang of it pretty quickly and loved it.
My biggest worry when buying the macbook were the reports of non replacable battery and puny hard drive (the SSD option at $999 is waaay to expensive for me). Fortunately this doesnt seem to be the case at all. Reports from mac sites demonstrate that the battery is actually pretty easy to replace, as all you need is a screwdriver. With this in mind, its only a matter of time before third party replacement batteries are available. Removing the hard drive takes a little more work, but its definately doable. The only problem is that the largest size comaptible 1.8" HDD available is precisely 80 Gb. This shouldnt be a problem as SSD drive prices are falling more and more every day, with reports saying that their prices should rive HDD prices by the end of this year/ early next year.
The "lack" of features is probably not going to be as big a problem as I thought. In all the years I have had my Thinkpad laptop, I probably burned less than 10 CD's/ DVD's. If I do find the need to burn a CD/ DVD I already have my 24" iMac as my primary desktop computer for that. When transfering files I mainly use my trusty 4 Gb USB drive which is more than enough. I installed Office 2008 using remote disk, which is an application that permits the macbook to "borrow" the disk drive from another computer to unstall apps. It worked as advertised, Office 2008 installed without any problems whatsoever.
The speaker sounded ok as it is mono, but as with any laptop I recommend using the headphone jack. The air also has a built in isight camera on top of the screen, it worked great. The one thing that I really missed was a firewire port. The external hard drive I use to back up my info and store my movies is firewire only, which means I am going to be forced to shell out some money for a USB external hard drive for use with my macbook air. Other than that the other "missing" features would most likely not be missed at all.
So after playing with the macbook air for more than a day I have to say I am pretty happy with it. One thing to keep in mind is that the macbook air is NOT meant to be used as a primary computer. If you decide to buy one I recommend you at least have a decent desktop for you primary computing needs. In the end I believe that Apple always meant for the macbook air to be used as a second computer, where portability was more important.
I know this was a bit long winded, but I hope it gives you all a better idea of what you are getting into if you decide to get a macbook air.
