Apple’s 3′rd gen. portable.
MacBook Air is apple’s newest notebook. You pay 2 Grand for being able to fit your new notebook inside a manilla envelope. What kind of notebok you actually get for that sum of money can be quiet hard to figure out.
Ultraportable notebook 1.st edition.
The answer is that mba is a brand new category. One could be bold and say that it’s apple’s 3rd generation portable. Apple has been the market leader in notebook innovations since that product category’s inception (portable computers that is…) (more on that in a later post)
Generally speaking I have nothing bad to say about the macBook Air. It’s a very likeable machine, maybe even loveable. In fact I have plenty of good things to tell you about.
However there are things that I don’t like, and I’m not going to censor anything here. This is my review based on subjective facts.
Disappointments:
I HATE the fact that i need to have my battery replaced which means that I will have to live without it for a week or so. Batterytime is roughly 2 hours and drains to 17% while in sleep mode overnight.
But I’ll give it a week of so if Apple should release any updates.
I HATE the fact that the general experience is that the batteries are far from 5hrs. This sucks bigtime as it implies that i will never see those good battery times. You know; when you actually don’t need to bring your power brick.
I hav now had it for 4 days, and tonight I saw 5hrs+ on the batteri guessing menu item for the first time. Nice. It’s now at a more realistic 4:07 but that fine too. 
I HATE that it is so noisy. It’s fan is at 6000rpm or above most of the time, and the cpu is mostly at 75 celsius og above. No hard work being done at all. This has been the expeience untill tonight. I pray for silence to prevail.
To those furstrated that the mba doesn’t have what they need; patience dear… same design will arrive mb pro update this summer or fall.
What’s it like?
Feels solid.
I LOVE the feel of it. And the finish in craftmanship too. One might even get close to calling it rugged. If you don’t mind scratches that is… The battery is a structural element. Very clever.
It really is light. Almost too light.
It really is light as a feather. Sometimes is feels like cut out of cardboard and painted silver. In fact I paid steep to get there.
But certain habbits need change or it won’t survive more than a year. It easely slides around on a table. Lifting the machine in one hand results in very swift movements that sometimes are dangerously close to violence on the screen hinges and in time will apply a fair amount of torque to the cabinet. Best to be careful.
It has a new feel to it, for being a notebook.
It’s snappy! Amazingly so…
If you’re planning on buying this thing odds are that your already own a laptop and want to replace it. Along with those in the market for their first apple *book this would make you majority target. Don’t fret and do not doubt. Your old machine did the job, and the mba will do it too. Most likely faster than your old machine (if it’s laptop) and in a nicer package for added value 
This might be due to extensive caching technology, but whatever tricks -it works. It feels very responsive, and that harddrive is more than capable. It took me 10 minutes to transfer 10gigs og backed up stuff. I was impressed by the 1.8″ 4200rpm iPod drive. BTW
It’s roomy (enough)
Let’s face it. Realistically it won’t satisfy needs more than 2 years at most. But chances are that I will want to replace it before this deadline anyways. So the limited capacity is something can be dealt with.
Initially i migrated wirelessly witoh the assitant. That took alnight and didn’t complete properly because i’d left the display nearly closed, and it closed all the way during the night and thus went to sleep mode.
So I did a lean and clean install instead, no iDVD, no languages etc. I migrated manually and with all my music and photos (6000 tracks + 6000 pics) now on the air, I have 20GB available. Pretty decent taking into consideration what kind of machine this is. An ultra portable.
The backlit keyboard
is an amazingly functionalist solution to dimmed light conditions. It’s winther in Denmark right now and dusk arrives early in the afternoon. So from around 3 o’clock i have the light on and like magic i can clearly see the letters on the keyboard.
Why not just use white letters on all the buttons you might be asking yourself. Well, firstly it might rub off but that can be solved in a simple manner. But being soft on the eyes is a deed white on black doesn’t do.
The conventional keyboard
Simply the best ever. It has the layout of the macbook and the feel and sound of a mb pro.
Sound, what say you?
It sounds impressive. No visible speaker grill kinda gives the impressionthat there is no sound. None worth mentioning you’d assume. But actually the is one feisty speaker underneath the arrow keys more than capable of presentations and movie playback.
State of the Art
The MacBook Air resembles a 2 year old macbook performance wise, only it feels more responsive and it’s all delivered in a delicoius aluminum clam, that you don’t mind carrying everywhere.
Apple has made some wise decisions. Both on behalf of the industry and behalf of end users. When looking forward there really is no need for the industry to stick with 2.5″ drives. We all know that size does matter, and what Apple is doing with this is paving way.
It’s only a matter of time before other notebook vendors will follow the same path concerning hardware choices. As they did with the mouse, and the floppy disk drive, eventually the optical drive, and hopefully not too lagging when it comes to 1.8″ drive architectures.
This is the ultimate personal notebook available. Period. Portable -not luggable.
Another great review here:
