Apple MacBook Air Review
Apple’s latest notebook, the MacBook Air, is being hailed as the world’s thinnest. At well under an inch at the thickest point, the Air offers a thin design coupled with an extremely lightweight package for a notebook that has the same basic footprint as the standard MacBook. The flip side to all of this, however, is the (some say inexcusable) list of features left out, with a staggering price tag that has wallets cowering in fear at the cost of the top tier configuration.
Our MacBook Air has the following specifications:
- Mac OS X v10.5.1 Leopard and Windows Vista Ultimate
- Intel Core 2 Duo P7500 1.6GHz (4MB L2 cache, 800MHz frontside bus)
- 2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
- 80GB 4200rpm parallel ATA hard disk drive
- 13.3″ glossy widescreen TFT LED backlit display (1280 x 800)
- Intel GMA X3100 graphics (144MB of shared memory)
- iSight webcam
- AirPort Extreme WiFi (IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n)
- Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
- Micro DVI, USB 2.0 port (480Mbps), Audio out
- Dimensions : 0.16-0.76″, 12.8″, 8.94″ (H, W, D)
- Weight: 3.0 pounds (3lbs 0.6oz actual)
- Integrated 37-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery
- 45W MagSafe power adapter with cable management system (6.5oz)
Conclusion
Apple is pushing the envelope (cough cough) with the MacBook Air … in various ways that some people will love and others will hate. On one hand they offer a super thin, lightweight design, but on the other they take away ports and give you a permanent battery. This notebook also suffers from some early release driver quirks, but those should hopefully be resolved in the near future. Overall I think this is a promising notebook that should force some other manufacturers to wake up and design some lighter and slimmer full-size notebooks.
Pros
- Works out of the box with Windows Vista (even if it does have a few hiccups)
- Thin and lightweight design that manages to stay incredibly strong
- Battery life claims are not far off from being accurate
Cons
- Belches out heat like nobody’s business
- No replaceable battery
- Slow charging speeds
- Almost no ports
Filed under: Review notebook
