subject: Apple MacBook Air – Thin yet sturdy [print this page] Get a Macbook Air FREE Get a Macbook Air FREE
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
The Apple MacBook Air is 12.8 inches wide, 0.7 inch high, 8.9 inches deep and weighs three lbs. The notebook is powered by Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6 GHz, dual core processor with bus speed of 800 MHz. It has L2 cache of 4 MB. The installed memory is 2 GB DDR2 SD RAM at 667 MHz. For storing data, there is 80 GB hard disk at 4,200 rpm.
The display is 13.3 inches big and has a resolution of 1,280800 pixels. The graphics processor is Intel GMA X3100 Dynamic Video Memory Technology 4.0 of 144 MB. Interfaces include Display / video Apple micro-DVI, Hi-Speed USB VGA 4 pin USB Type A, Headphones Mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm, USB 2.0. There are two included cables - Micro-DVI-VGA adapter and Micro-DVI-DVI adapter
The included battery is 37 Wh lithium ion battery with rated life of five hours. Preinstalled OS is Apple MacOS X 10.5. Bundled software includes Apple XCode Developer Tools, Apple Mac OS X Mail, Apple Address Book, Apple DVD Player, Apple Spotlight, Apple Dashboard, Apple Spaces, Photo Booth, Apple iCal, Front Row, Apple iChat, Apple Safari, Apple Boot Camp, Apple QuickTime, Apple iLife 08, Apple Quick Look, Apple Time Machine, Drivers & Utilities.
The laptop comes with one year warranty and there is 90 days technical help provided for free over the phone.
Razzle Dazzle:
It is difficult for us to recommend this laptop over Apple's own 13 inch MacBook since the latter has better hardware and comes at a much lower price. Footprint of this laptop is the same as that of standard MacBooks but none of the other Apple products sports such sexy aluminum chassis. The weight of this laptop is a bit heavier than we thought; the ultra thin chassis gives an idea that this is ultra light weight too, but this is not true. If you are looking for alternatives in terms of weight, there is the VAIO TZ150 which sports a 11.1 inch screen and is about 0.3 pound lighter than Air. You can also check out the Portege R500, it has a 12.1 inch screen and is 0.6 pound lighter.
Inside Dope:
We admit it, we were ogling at this laptop for a lot of time when it landed in our labs. How can a laptop be this thin? We first thought it was some kind of a dummy. This laptop, at its thickest point, is just 0.76 inch thick which makes it great for carrying around. But we don't know if this is the thinnest yet. If you have been following technology for a while, you might remember the obscure Mitsubishi notebook way back in 1997. Now we cannot compare the dimensions of both these laptops but we will conclude that both of these are quite thin.
The engineering and design that has gone behind this laptop seems incredible but we have come to expect such things from Apple looking at their previous products. We don't expect this laptop to be as popular as other fast notebooks around since there are severe compromises made in terms of hardware in order to keep the size thin. The biggest compromise is connectivity option interface, all you get is a USB port. Now this might be unforgivable if you like to connect lots of devices to your computer at once. The extreme thin size also sacrifices the optical drive but Apple makes up for it by giving you a wireless access to another computer's optical drive.
We will recommend you to choose this laptop over the standard 13 inch MacBook only if you prefer portability over performance. The weight is minimized, the screen real estate is maximized and inclusion of Wi-Fi makes this a good notebook for people who live in Wi-Fi hotspots. The starting price of this notebook is $1,799. It is a bit high considering there are other notebooks with the same specs which come at similar configuration. But none of the other notebooks will make heads turn as this one. So if you are a limelight hogger, get this laptop.
Apple MacBook Air has an iSight camera along with a microphone. The LED based display has a built in ambient light sensor which automatically adjusts the brightness display according to the light in the environment. The keyboard also features back lighting and it gets switched on automatically when ambient room light goes down. The best part about this notebook is trackpad which is revamped, big and supports a new range of multi touch gestures. Swiping three fingers across the trackpad gets you back in the Web browser history and just like iPhone, you can use your thumb and forefinger for zooming in and out of photos.
The Apple MacBook Air has 2 GB RAM and the processor clock speed is much slower as compared to the standard Macbook. The hard disk has a lower than standard rotation speed of 4,200 rpm. This is what you have to accept if you want a slim notebook. When it comes to speed, we weren't surprised to see that Air was miles behind 13 inch Macbook. Air has a dual core processor which is good for basic tasks like multimedia playback, Web surfing, and light productivity tasks. In our multitasking tests, we played video, surfed the Web and worked on an office document. This laptop could easily handle all of this without any fuss.
The laptop doesn't have a user replaceable battery which might prove to be deal breaker for some. There are not a lot of Apple's products which come with user replaceable batteries but when you look at competition, all laptop's batteries can be replaced. The laptop gave us a battery life of around four hours which is close to Apple's rated five hours.
Nitty Gritty:
We really liked the design of this laptop but when it comes to performance, we are skeptical since the Air is much slower than other Macbooks. Pick up this laptop if you need a portable laptop and can compromise on speed.
