MacBook Air

Just ordered and gave my wife a new 13″ Macbook Air for her birthday. We set it up and used it yesterday and today. She loves the size and weight, and how much nicer the display is than that on her 5-year-old G4 Powerbook. The 128 GB SSD makes booting and waking from sleep much faster. The new MacBook Air is an excellent value AND notebook!

This boy has a great performance and portability combination, state of art design and very high build quality (2 USB ports, 1 SD card slot, 1 Mini display port). It seems to me it is even faster than low-end Macbook Pro 13″ 2010. This should be resulted from the on-board flash storage. If this one has an equivalent display experience as the 13″ macbook pro, I would recommend everyone go get this one.

I am a software engineer who enjoys fast machines. I have a quad-core PC desktop at home and I just sold my i7 macbook pro. Going to the air I thought I’ll have to sacrifice speed – I was wrong. The fact that you can get ultra portability, quiet operation, AND speed is mind-blowing. If you think this is expensive, think again – Dell just came out with their own competing version that’s more expensive! And, of course, not quite as light or small, and it’s still plastic, not aluminum. And resolution is lower.

Is 2GB enough for MacBook Air? Yes, b/c OS X runs much better on less memory than Windows. Is 128GB enough? Only if you don’t dual-boot and have external hard drive for all the backups and data you don’t often use.

Does it run photo-editing apps well? Yep, albeit you may want 4GB if you do that a lot. 1080p video? It yawns at it. Flash? Full-screen without a hitch, albeit fans kick on after a bit (flash, of course, is very CPU-hungry).

I love the thing, but I do want to dual-boot, and I want to run Windows via Parallels in background. So I’ll be upgrading to 256GB 4GB version. With the high resale price, it’s more than worth it.

In fact I was impressed so much, my first cousin, my brother, my roommate, and one of my friends now own Airs too after my recommendation, and they all love it.

If you’re looking to upgrade from an older Macbook Pro or any Macbook this computer will NOT disappoint. The size, speed, and screen come together to form a fantastic overall product. I’ve always said the best Windows machine is a Mac and bootcamp, and this is no exception. As an engineering student I have to use Windows all the time, Win7 runs great, with no issues whatsoever. This is by far the best laptop I’ve ever owned or used. Period. If you can afford it, I promise that you will not regret it.

- FAST. I mean this thing is blazingly fast – you really have to use it to understand. Every application I’ve tried is open before it finishes its first “bounce” on the dock. Even monsters like Excel and Powerpoint take less than two seconds to completely open. Chrome launches in milliseconds. Shutdown is ~3 seconds, cold boot is ~7 seconds to OSX, 15 seconds to Win7. Sleep is instantaneous.
- Battery life is great. For my usage I charge it overnight, unplug around 7am and use casually throughout the day, in and our of sleep. At the end of the day around midnight I plug it in with around 20% charge remaining. This is with the screen of MacBook Air at 50% brightness (more on that in a minute) and wifi on all the time.
- The keyboard and trackpad are the same fantastic combination you get in all the other Macs (minus the backlight on the Pro) – roomy, comfortable, and multi-touchy.
- The screen is incredible, the 1440×900 resolution makes my old Macbook’s 1280×800 look terrible. The LED backlight is shockingly bright- at 50% brightness it is as bright as my old Macbook at full-tilt. At 100% it is like staring at the sun. I keep it at around 50% during the day, slightly lower at night, and am quite happy with it. Another note: The screen has a nice matte finish which is great with reflections.
- Size. This thing is so thin and light it’s practically non-existent. But you know that already :) Also, it is silent. Not quiet – silent.

I’m a computer engineering student, so I own several computers, each with their own purpose. I have a tablet for note taking in class, a desktop super computer (i7, SSD, 3x 23″ monitors) for serious work and gaming. Previously I had a 2009 Macbook which I used for goofing off and light work (pspice, eagle pcb, office, etc). I loved my Macbook – it was quiet, the battery life was better than a comparable Windows laptop, and it was quick enough for my needs – but I enjoyed using my desktop more. That has all changed since I bought the Air – holy sweet Jesus I love this machine.

Boots up and starts/runs almost every program faster than my quad-core pc desktop with windows 7. Its about three times as thin as my old sl300 ibm laptop and boots up in about 1/10 the time (even though I just reinstalled Vista on the ibm). The ssd is really important if you look at the benchmarks and is much more important than getting the slightly faster processor or getting more ram. This is my first Mac and I won’t ever buy another PC again. MacBook Air is just amazingly light, thin and fast.

Absolute cool product. Best laptop I have ever had. Extremely fast and high definition graphics. I am a heavy internet user and the battery never lasts less than 5 hours (sometimes longer) without recharging. Phenomenal!!

By now with all the reviews, you should know how this computer is wonderful in so many ways, so I will limit my review to how this computer plays World of Warcraft, for those of you who need to know.

I had a 15in MacBook Air from 3 years ago, which heats up and go crazy when I play WoW. I decided to upgrade, between MBA and macbook pro15. As you know, the new macbook pro has insane specs from processors to graphic cards. But I carry this computer with me on my shoulders all day and the 5lb weight of the old laptop is not bad but it wears on me. I watched videos of people who play WoW on this computer and I decided to give it a spin.

So far I have logged in about 10 hours of WoW, with a few heroic 5 man heroics but no large raids. First thing I noticed with WoW is the high-res screen make the game look so sharp and vibrant it literally bleed from the screen. This little baby has resolution equivalent to a 15 in screen per Apple, and they are not kidding! The game play is smooth with medium resolution. I played with it on my lap for 2 hours and the computer gets warm but not uncomfortable. Doing that with my old macbook pro would cause 3rd degree burns.

As expected, and more!! Incredible machine, thin, light, comfortable. After have been using windows for almost 25 years, switching to Apple, was a hard decision. But the best one I could have done.

I could not be more satisfied with it. Extremely light weight just about the same as a notebook, and the size is even thinner. I often bring it with me throughout the day in campus and often do long distance travel, so its portability has becomes very handy. It has a beautiful design and elegant look which is perfect those who favor appearance. If you’re looking for a laptop that is moderate duty, portable, and good looking, this one is yours. This is my first MacBook and we are definitely like made for each other.

I bought this puppy on a whim because an attempt to share the G5 laptop with my wife was causing some schoolyard friction. Keep in mind that as a retired geezer my primary use for a laptop is almost entirely limited to the net, mail, photos and a occasional movie. I edit my superb videos on a desktop.

Pleasant surprises:
1) One second after raising the screen it’s ready to go.
2) At my level of usage the bottom gets just ever-so-slightly warm. Hence, I put it on top of a pillow on my lap without the fear of cooking it’s innards. No more hot thighs and cooling fan noise.
3) The super-slippery finger pad is neat.
4) Even with my sub-par hearing the speakers are more than I can use – amazing with such a thin profile.

It has been quite a while since I’ve developed an attachment to a laptop like I have to this one. At least ten years since I’ve seen a laptop or any computer as anything more than a tool, just as I would a hammer.

But the new MacBook Air, with it’s tiny chassis basically begs to tag along wherever you go.

The keyboard is the same great Apple chicklet style as on their other portable line, which is one of the best keyboards (alongside the thinkpad) on any portable device out there. It’s springy and responsive and gives good feedback. The screen is basically the best in a device of it’s size. (I’ll admit, I was unsure about whether the high resolution screen would be too tiny for comfortable use, but it’s clarity and crispness make it actually easier to read things on than my old HP 16″ with a lower screen resolution.

Also, as many many reviews out there have already pointed out, but which I didn’t personally believe until I started using it myself, don’t worry about speed. The clock speed ratings, which everyone including myself have been conditioned to pay way too much attention to over the years, are extremely misleading. The SSD storage in this thing makes more of a difference than i had believed possible. In short, this thing is darned snappy, even feels faster than my desktop with a higher clock speed.

The battery life is excellent, and For writing and even web browsing, it regularly outlasts its stated 7 hours of usage on a charge.

I’ve been a Windows user all my life until I got my first iMac in 08. Once you go Mac, you never go back. I boot that computer in Windows if I have a Windows specific program. But let me talk more about the instant on feature. My iMac boots up in less than a minute, and that’s with 2 years worth of junk and programs on it. My Windows laptop – I make coffee and come back. I was going to try to just use my windows laptop, but then I realize that 5 minute+ boot time was a productivity killer. Sometimes you just need to boot up to surf the net quickly and that didn’t let you. If you put it into “standby” mode, the battery would die. So I always just went to my iMac, even if I was in the opposite side of my house. I even got impatient with the iMac’s boot times so I just put that one into sleep mode. So instant on there, in a sense (still takes 5 seconds).

The MacBook Air, on the other hand, really instant on. By the time I get the cover opened and into position, it’s already good to go. When I cold boot, it’s ready to go in less than 15 secs. That’s just ridiculous! But it makes this computer well worth its price. I find myself constantly going to it over the last few days just to check the weather, check my email quickly, go quickly work on something. At first, I thought it was the novelty. Then I realized that it was always in my kitchen, ready to go, without a plug chaining it to a desk in another room. That makes it and me a lot more productive. I needed a change in scenery while working today so I just hooked up on wifi in the kitchen to get some work done.