MacBook Air Review

[Ramesh]

Ok, I promised I would do a little write-up/review. Here it is:

Screen:
Well, I am writing this on my SECOND MBA because the first one had a bad pixel. And I actually found ANOTHER one on this machine too! WTH?! No one has the MBA's in stock, so I'm stuck with this one for now. The second one is as noticeable, and seems to only show up after being on for a bit. Aside from that, the screen is amazing! Very clear, vivid, and bright. The ambient sensor works great.

Result: 3.5/5 (would be higher, but 2 dead pixels irk me)

Keyboard:
After using a MBP, MB and and iMac's keyboard, I think this is my favorite keyboard. It's not "mushy", and it's very responsive. I personally like the low profile keys and the back-lit feature. A good, solid keyboard

Result: 5/5

Touchpad/Trackpad:
Definitely growing on me. It's very large, which is good and bad. Good from the sense of using it, bad from the sense that when I type, I inadvertently will touch the pad and move the cursor to some random spot. I thought I could disable the trackpad when I type, but I can't. Using better form, this is avoidable though. The new features are great. I like the triple finger swipe, which will go forward and back with one motion. This works within finder and safari, which is pretty cool. I find this very using while browsing for files and pictures.

Result: 4/5

Performance:
Being 1.6Ghz, it's not a screamer, but it's not that bad. It renders webpages quickly and launches programs at a reasonable speed. I haven't tried anything too intense, but I have run excel, word, etc, and those are fine. The 2 GB of RAM really help. It definitely runs faster than I thought it would, so that scored some points in my book.

Result: 4/5

Overall:
Not a bad machine. The remote disk really acts efficiently. It installs at a speed that doesn't feel slow. Installing office did take a while, but I was installing firefox, updates, and other programs all at once. During this time, I felt no lag. The thinness of this machine is really nice. Also, the charger is not as breakaway as the MBP's or MB's. I have to be mindful that it doesn't get caught on one of the dogs. I think it would break away, but I'm not so sure. It's light, and very, VERY thin. :D The coolness factor does make the machine more attractive.

Overall 4.3/5 (not an average of the above scores)


If anyone has any questions, let me know. I wrote this while watching TV. :) I may have forgotten a thing or two to include.

[patrickj]

Good job. Short and sweet - well, except for the dead pixel sourness :smile:

[Ramesh]

Thanks. :)

[scandalex]

2 dead pixels? I'm guessing that both your MBA's came from the same store. Wonder if there was a bad patch of deal pixel MBA's produced?!? Anyone else with the Air having DP issues?

[Ramesh]

2 dead pixels? I'm guessing that both your MBA's came from the same store. Wonder if there was a bad patch of deal pixel MBA's produced?!? Anyone else with the Air having DP issues?
2 different store, 2 different cities! 1 from Orange, 1 from Irvine. :angry:

[scandalex]

2 different store, 2 different cities! 1 from Orange, 1 from Irvine. :angry:

I used to live in (Northern) Cali and I dont remember if Orange & Irvine are neighbors.

[Ramesh]

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=3741+W+Chapman+Ave,+Orange,+CA&daddr=2982+El+Camino+Real,+Tustin,+CA&sll=33.725393,-117.793908&sspn=0.008031,0.014462&ie=UTF8&z=12


There are about 3 or 4 best buys inbetween

[kokogirl]

Nice review. Thanks!

I wish I knew when the new macbooks were coming out so I can compare. I am sooo impatient. I want to get a new computer. I do not buy computers very often, so I need to make a good decision.

[Ramesh]

Another thing: It's actually quite sturdy for being so thin and small. I was quite surprised, but this casing is very solid. If I didn't have that dead pixel, this machine would be near perfect for what it is.

[geordisjd]

2 dead pixels? I'm guessing that both your MBA's came from the same store. Wonder if there was a bad patch of deal pixel MBA's produced?!? Anyone else with the Air having DP issues?

No dead pixel here.

[phsycology]

Good review; short and sweet ;)

Yeh it is sturdy and feels classy, though nothing can live up to the strength of the old iBook G3 shells (they were made from bulletproof material, according to apple). I had this for a few years, and my brother uses it now, and its withstanded a lot! At the moment, its sittingbunder the sofa, having not been used for at least 4 months.

[Ramesh]

So found this out today. And it pissed me off. :angry: Remote disk would work, but drag and dropping files WOULD NOT WORK. I tried EVERYTHING networking-wise. I was on a Linksys WRT54G - the most common router. I did have a Airport Extreme Base Station, but had sold it to a friend who had become an Apple convert (b/c of me).

Anyway - I ended up taking the 2 month old router back to Best Buy and picked up a AEBS. The manager let me return my 2 month old Linksys for full retail and put that toward the AEBS. So, $140 later my network is working just fine. A little aggravating, but the dude at BB did mention routing problems with the Linksys and multiple Macs. So, I just wanted to throw that out there....

[kokogirl]

So found this out today. And it pissed me off. :angry: Remote disk would work, but drag and dropping files WOULD NOT WORK. I tried EVERYTHING networking-wise. I was on a Linksys WRT54G - the most common router. I did have a Airport Extreme Base Station, but had sold it to a friend who had become an Apple convert (b/c of me).

Anyway - I ended up taking the 2 month old router back to Best Buy and picked up a AEBS. The manager let me return my 2 month old Linksys for full retail and put that toward the AEBS. So, $140 later my network is working just fine. A little aggravating, but the dude at BB did mention routing problems with the Linksys and multiple Macs. So, I just wanted to throw that out there....

Crap. I have a linksys router. Will I have to buy a new router for Air then? (if I buy it)

[Ramesh]

Crap. I have a linksys router. Will I have to buy a new router for Air then? (if I buy it)

Well - it worked on every other setup. I bought a USB to Ethernet dongle and when it was hooked up via that, drag and drop was great. Wireless internet was fast and worked fine; even the remote disk was fine. It was just the drag and drop that irked me. So it'll depend on your setup and your needs.

[depthnerd]

I think you should've reviewed the "bang for your buck" option. It seems like a huge ripoff in my eyes. But hey - that's the Apple way.

[Ramesh]

I think you should've reviewed the "bang for your buck" option. It seems like a huge ripoff in my eyes. But hey - that's the Apple way.

Eh, for me, the price point is a little high, but not outrageous. Just like the iPhone, we pay for the extra "cool" factor. Couldn't the same argument be made about the iPhone?

[Ramesh]

Crap. I have a linksys router. Will I have to buy a new router for Air then? (if I buy it)

If you cruise over to the Apple forums, this seems to be a spotty issue, regardless of router. There are some workarounds that pelle have come up with though....

[depthnerd]

Eh, for me, the price point is a little high, but not outrageous. Just like the iPhone, we pay for the extra "cool" factor. Couldn't the same argument be made about the iPhone?
For me, no. I jailbroke it and unlocked it. Making it potentially one of the best phones on the market.

The MBA unfortunately is the same as other Mac laptops, even worse maybe. It doesn't see the same light as my iPhone does.

[Ramesh]

For me, no. I jailbroke it and unlocked it. Making it potentially one of the best phones on the market.

The MBA unfortunately is the same as other Mac laptops, even worse maybe. It doesn't see the same light as my iPhone does.

Yea, I see your point, but keep in mind that I also agree with SOME of what you're saying. My point is that it's great as a secondary laptop, not as a primary machine. I use it mostly to screw around, and don't do anything cpu intensive on it. It's more b/c it's new, and the technology that's in it. Now that I have everything up and running, I'm very satisfied with my purchase. It's MUCH faster than I thought it'd be. My iMac is 2.16 C2D and I swear the MBA keeps up with the simple tasks (mail, internet, word, excel, etc). Now try to throw photoshop on it? I'll find out this week. I plan on putting it on there, just for kicks. :2cool:

[jjvaldez]

the only thing that i dont like about it right now is that there is no battery indicator ... i know that it not a removable battery but i dont like that have to turn it on to see bat life.... they could/should have added a button on the bottom to see battery life bettter...

[kokogirl]

If you cruise over to the Apple forums, this seems to be a spotty issue, regardless of router. There are some workarounds that pelle have come up with though....

Can you recommend a good apple forum that I can lurk in? This is my only current forum. Workarounds will likely frustrate me, honestly. Thanks again.

[Ramesh]

Can you recommend a good apple forum that I can lurk in? This is my only current forum. Workarounds will likely frustrate me, honestly. Thanks again.

On my phone, so no link... Go to Apple.com and go to support then discussions.

[jpmihalk]

Can you recommend a good apple forum that I can lurk in? This is my only current forum. Workarounds will likely frustrate me, honestly. Thanks again.http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=239

That's the official Apple MacBook Air forum.

[kokogirl]

Thanks guys. I will check it out.

[morgan]

The only problem i have with it is I wish that it had a CDrom. Great for college students who have a long walk from campus though.

[pc88]

like you, my 1st macbook air had a stuck pixel on black only and it glows bright blue in the middle part (rightside) of the display, so on every movie, i see it. lucky for me, the mac genius at the nyc store agreed and i got a new one last night.

i am almost afraid to open it today but will examine it with a collection of solid colors soon. i have another 14 days to return this one.

speed:
i think the speed of the macair is enough even to play with vlc a 18gb file wirelessly stored on an external nas unit. the file was a 1920x1080 movie captured with a macbook pro in m2t format. playing on the macair was pretty fluid and at a display of a few feet, looked almost as good as that ultra thin sony oled display for $2,500.

http://www.zoto.com/paulchiu/img/800x566/299c1fb3a873ea9d3819fa1579242abd.jpg


pc





Ok, I promised I would do a little write-up/review. Here it is:

Screen:
Well, I am writing this on my SECOND MBA because the first one had a bad pixel. And I actually found ANOTHER one on this machine too! WTH?! No one has the MBA's in stock, so I'm stuck with this one for now. The second one is as noticeable, and seems to only show up after being on for a bit. Aside from that, the screen is amazing! Very clear, vivid, and bright. The ambient sensor works great.

Result: 3.5/5 (would be higher, but 2 dead pixels irk me)

Keyboard:
After using a MBP, MB and and iMac's keyboard, I think this is my favorite keyboard. It's not "mushy", and it's very responsive. I personally like the low profile keys and the back-lit feature. A good, solid keyboard

Result: 5/5

Touchpad/Trackpad:
Definitely growing on me. It's very large, which is good and bad. Good from the sense of using it, bad from the sense that when I type, I inadvertently will touch the pad and move the cursor to some random spot. I thought I could disable the trackpad when I type, but I can't. Using better form, this is avoidable though. The new features are great. I like the triple finger swipe, which will go forward and back with one motion. This works within finder and safari, which is pretty cool. I find this very using while browsing for files and pictures.

Result: 4/5

Performance:
Being 1.6Ghz, it's not a screamer, but it's not that bad. It renders webpages quickly and launches programs at a reasonable speed. I haven't tried anything too intense, but I have run excel, word, etc, and those are fine. The 2 GB of RAM really help. It definitely runs faster than I thought it would, so that scored some points in my book.

Result: 4/5

Overall:
Not a bad machine. The remote disk really acts efficiently. It installs at a speed that doesn't feel slow. Installing office did take a while, but I was installing firefox, updates, and other programs all at once. During this time, I felt no lag. The thinness of this machine is really nice. Also, the charger is not as breakaway as the MBP's or MB's. I have to be mindful that it doesn't get caught on one of the dogs. I think it would break away, but I'm not so sure. It's light, and very, VERY thin. :D The coolness factor does make the machine more attractive.

Overall 4.3/5 (not an average of the above scores)


If anyone has any questions, let me know. I wrote this while watching TV. :) I may have forgotten a thing or two to include.

[Atlas]

I'm so torn. I just got the MacBook in white, coming from an IBM notebook, and hooked on Mac from now on. Now the MBA is out and I really want one. My wife even offered to keep the MB for "around the house" when not on her iMac.
Sorry, I digress.
The fact that there is only one usb is what's holding me back. The lack of optical drive is annoying but manageable. But, one usb?!
How do you get around needing the usb for ethernet in a non wifi office and print when the usb is being used?
I apologize for the rant but can't believe a state of the art laptop has such a, for me at least, crippling lack of needed hardware.
Traveling between three offices for work, and two do not have wifi, would make the MBA perfect(with another usb) :frown:

[Ramesh]

I'm so torn. I just got the MacBook in white, coming from an IBM notebook, and hooked on Mac from now on. Now the MBA is out and I really want one. My wife even offered to keep the MB for "around the house" when not on her iMac.
Sorry, I digress.
The fact that there is only one usb is what's holding me back. The lack of optical drive is annoying but manageable. But, one usb?!
How do you get around needing the usb for ethernet in a non wifi office and print when the usb is being used?
I apologize for the rant but can't believe a state of the art laptop has such a, for me at least, crippling lack of needed hardware.
Traveling between three offices for work, and two do not have wifi, would make the MBA perfect(with another usb) :frown:

Why not a hub?

[geordisjd]

Like this. Having only 1 USB port hasn't stopped me from doing just about everything at the same time. (I also have a superdrive)

http://gallery.mac.com/jacdem/100330/belkin/web.jpg

[pc88]

please, go get an usb extension dongy cord before you snap off something there!

this looks dangerous!

:gasp:




Like this. Having only 1 USB port hasn't stopped me from doing just about everything at the same time. (I also have a superdrive)

http://gallery.mac.com/jacdem/100330/belkin/web.jpg

[geordisjd]

please, go get an usb extension dongy cord before you snap off something there!

this looks dangerous!

:gasp:

Thanks for worrying about my MBA, but the Belkin hub is well-conceived. It is not a rigid device. It actually has 2 small joints (between the MBA's USB connection and the main body of the hub) that easily fold within 2 different planes, a little bit like 2 knee joints at 90 degrees of each other, allowing a wide range of motion. Only the synovial fluid is missing. Just kidding.:smile:

[pc88]

i'm glad then

maybe i'll get one for mine.


Thanks for worrying about my MBA, but the Belkin hub is well-conceived. It is not a rigid device. It actually has 2 small joints (between the MBA's USB connection and the main body of the hub) that easily fold within 2 different planes, a little bit like 2 knee joints at 90 degrees of each other, allowing a wide range of motion. Only the synovial fluid is missing. Just kidding.:smile:

[geordisjd]

The little guy that can do it all.

MBA in its pristine, non-polluted state:

http://gallery.mac.com/jacdem/100330/IMG_0452/web.jpg

Painful, but it takes less than 30 seconds to launch WindozeXP.
Please shield your children's eyes:

http://gallery.mac.com/jacdem/100330/IMG_0453/web.jpg

http://gallery.mac.com/jacdem/100330/IMG_0454/web.jpg

Minimize in dock ASAP.

[pc88]

george

is that fusion?

also, how much hard drive space you wasted on the xp install?

thanks

paul

[geordisjd]

george

is that fusion?

also, how much hard drive space you wasted on the xp install?

thanks

paul

I love the way you put it:"wasted". It's not Fusion, it's Parallels, and I have about 7 GB wasted to its use. Not for pleasure, but for work. I tried Vista on my Mac Pro, but it was messing up the Mac's display on top of being slow, so I reverted to XP, which does enough for what I do with it, and it's fast.

[chris]

I installed Vista on a new MacPro last night. Worked flawlessly and allowed me to Craigslist my DELL. I didn't realize that Bootcamp wouldn't support two windows installations on one partitioned hard drive. So, I have to rinse and repeat.

Yeah, I'm working on building the workstation . :laugh2:

[geordisjd]

I installed Vista on a new MacPro last night. Worked flawlessly and allowed me to Craigslist my DELL. I didn't realize that Bootcamp wouldn't support two windows installations on one partitioned hard drive. So, I have to rinse and repeat.

Yeah, I'm working on building the workstation . :laugh2:

Welcome to the fairly small club of Weirdos running 2 Windoze OS on their Macs without rebooting.

[Atlas]

Like this. Having only 1 USB port hasn't stopped me from doing just about everything at the same time. (I also have a superdrive)

http://gallery.mac.com/jacdem/100330/belkin/web.jpg

Where did you get that? Answers my dilemma. Off to the Apple Store tonight.

[geordisjd]

I got it from the Apple store.

[Atlas]

Thanks again. Have you tried that with the ethernet adapter. I have 2 offices that do not have wireless.

[Luckykelleyk]

Can you recommend a good apple forum that I can lurk in? This is my only current forum. Workarounds will likely frustrate me, honestly. Thanks again.

I know you posted this a few days back, but www.mac-forums.com is a good one.

[Atlas]

OK, picked up my MBA today! Tried to use migration assistant but froze up?
Decided to start from scratch and up and running. Only issue is with syncing my iPhone to the new MBA. Contacts and calender transfered but no music, ringtones or movies will transfer. Keeps telling me the music on iPhone will be replaced by the empty library!
Any help on getting my music/movies over?

[geordisjd]

OK, picked up my MBA today! Tried to use migration assistant but froze up?
Decided to start from scratch and up and running. Only issue is with syncing my iPhone to the new MBA. Contacts and calender transfered but no music, ringtones or movies will transfer. Keeps telling me the music on iPhone will be replaced by the empty library!
Any help on getting my music/movies over?

Congratulations! Which one did you get?

[Atlas]

Congratulations! Which one did you get?

Ha, just the "basic" one. We went from PC's to 3 macs and 2 iPhones in 4 months. Love them. Now if I can only get my music/Movies to sync I'd be very happy!

[geordisjd]

You can't sync your iPhone to a different computer as far as multimedia files are concerned. Spend 20 bucks on MEGAPHONE (http://www.ecamm.com/mac/megaphone/), it's well worth it. It will allow you to put all your iPhone music, videos and photos into your MBA's iTunes, (and from there, you can sync them back directly to your iPhone), otherwise they will be erased by the empty MBA iTuneslibrary.

As for the migration assistant, I'm not sure what to tell you, except try again. As I remember, I didn't use it. I just copied some of my MBP stuff on DVD's and from there, on the MBA.

[Atlas]

I will copy some documents from the MB onto a usb stick then load them on the MBA.

When the iPhone was synced to the macbook it was on the imac initially. I managed to get the music on by authorizing the MB somehow. But for some reason only the contacts, bookmarks, calender and email sync. Can't get the music.

[Atlas]

Ok, used a back up copy of iTunes to get all my music, a usb stick for photos, documents and a movie. All on now
Still working on the email settings though but loving the new computer.

[pc88]

on my 2nd macbook air and it too has a stuck or dead pixel..... again.

it's perfect on black, white, red, green and yellow.

On blue, there is a black dot (not sure if it's a single, but most likely)

what do you all think? suck it up or exchange and take another chance?

[Saverino]

Nice Review...thanks!!