# Macbook Air review



## Johnny Melano (Jan 26, 2004)

This is just a quick review of my Macbook Air purchase experience.

This thing is ridiculous... That's the only way I can sum it up. It's absolutely ridiculous.

You can't understand how thin and compact it is without holding it in your own hands. It's very sturdy, seems to be very durable, there aren't many things that can get snagged or anything, it's brilliant.

I purchased the new Airport Extreme with the MBA and together, they're great. I have my Mac Pro hooked up to the Airport via Gigabyte ethernet and the MBA through wireless N. File transfers are fast, real fast. Much better then my old setup with the Macbook Pro using wireless G. 

The start-up is nice and snappy, the screen is absolutely gorgeous, everything seems to be proportionally sound.

I played around with the sick touch-pad before I started my re-install. I'm now re-installing the OS to get rid of all those printer drivers (I only needed Brother and HP) so that saved me a couple gigs and language support which saved me an extra 3 gigs. At the end I should have about 65GBs left over the 74 it originally has.

The camera looks as good as my old MBP and applications seem to start-up pretty swiftly, I guess that comes from the 2 gigs of ram. 

The lack of a superdrive doesn't seem to bother me, I haven't used it for anything yet and never used my MBP superdrive. I'm doing the install for Mac OS X over the network through my Mac Pro.

The lack of ports will probably bother me along the line but obviously it's something I think I can live without or else I wouldn't have bought the thing.

It's definitely not a main computer, it's a secondary computer for those who need something easy to carry around and ridiculously tiny.

Feel free to ask me any questions.

A couple photos.


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## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

Wow!

That is some serious set up :greedy: . Looking forward to your long term usage review of the MBA.


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

So sexy... I'm green with envy!


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

Glad you like yours! Enjoy it..

I'm taking mine back....


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## Johnny Melano (Jan 26, 2004)

Heh, I just might do a longer review eventually but so far, I'm in <3!

Thanks for the comments.


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## iMouse (Mar 1, 2008)

kloan said:


> Glad you like yours! Enjoy it..
> 
> I'm taking mine back....


Get an iMac 24 then.


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## Johnny Melano (Jan 26, 2004)

Oh yeah? Why's that?


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## iMouse (Mar 1, 2008)

??? That was directed at *kloan*, not you??


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## Johnny Melano (Jan 26, 2004)

Sorry, I didn't quote his message but I was asking kloan why he returned it.


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## Suite Edit (Dec 17, 2003)

Look at the size of that screen bezel!!! XX) 

I was really trying to justify one... but man! It's as big as the ACD's... What in the heck...

Everything else is nearly perfect though... and that's a beautiful setup there, Johnny


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## iMouse (Mar 1, 2008)

Johnny Melano said:


> Sorry, I didn't quote his message but I was asking kloan why he returned it.


Perhaps it didn't meet his expectations, or his needs???

Unless you really, REALLY, need a lappy for travel, the iMac is a far better buy. IMHO.


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## Johnny Melano (Jan 26, 2004)

I just don't know where you get the fact that he doesn't have a desktop?

Maybe he already has a desktop... Like I said, this is definitely a secondary computer.

Thanks Suite Edit. The bezel's are big but they don't heat up which is a plus for me and they're so gosh-darn gorgeous. It works for me, that's for sure. She needs more ram though


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## iMouse (Mar 1, 2008)

So solly, if I incorrectly assumed he was a poor brewery mouse, like myself.

I have obviously stumbled upon the Nirvana of all things technical.

My apologies.


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

I had actually originally posted why, but the wireless connection constantly drops with Macs and this stupid 2wire router, and when I clicked post I lost everything I typed and didn't feel like typing it out again.

I find the top casing has the same amount of flexing as the Powerbooks and Macbook Pros I've owned. This is something I'm just not comfortable with. Despite people posting otherwise, it does flex.

I'm not a fan of the rather sharp edges, I find it uncomfortable to grip.

The timed battery meter is absolutely useless, it jumps around all over the damn place, much like the earlier iPods did. I've owned plenty of Mac 'notebooks' and none of them acted like this.

I definitely DO NOT get the advertised 5 hours. It would be fine if the said 'up to', but they clearly state 5 hours, and the most I can get is 4, and that's just leaving it sit idle, doing nothing.

The access to the flip down port and a/c connector is way too cumbersome. Lifting the machine to access these is very annoying, and plugging stuff into the USB port feels quite iffy... as though I may break it.

The drop in CPU speed and slower HDD are also contributing factors to my decision. I knew what I was getting into when I bought it, and at first it did feel adequately quick, but after more extensive usage, I've discovered there is a noticeable decrease in performance over the Macbook.

The screen is absolutely fantastic, definitely like this one.
I also like how much cooler it runs.
Backlit keyboard is probably my favourite feature.

All in all though, for my needs, this machine doesn't do it for me. Once I'd gotten over the initial glee of a new toy, the novelty had worn off enough to realize I'm better off with a faster, more serviceable used Macbook (white, no smudges).

With the money I save, I'm going to put towards a 42" LCD TV.

Yeah, I agree though this is definitely a secondary computer.. by no means suitable as a primary machine, which is what I was trying to achieve with it. For the price, it just isn't worth it to me.


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## gtgt (Jul 19, 2005)

I was at the Apple store today and asked the geek about how my mba would get too hot frequently and shut itself down to a crawl.
He asked me what I put it on. I said my bed, my lap, the couch. He then told me that it was only to be put on a table so it can breathe. That's why they now call it a notebook instead of laptop.
If you ask me, it's just poor design. Really, why put the only vents on the bottom of the thing? I bet the next generation will address this. If I video chat on the thing for more than 15 minutes, it slows down, then just freezes.
Unacceptable for this kind of money.


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

Actually, I've noticed mine would get very slow as well.... and I have it on a flat surface.

Not sure what's going on with it, but it doesn't seem to be very good with CPU intensive apps or with many apps open at the same time.

I had Safari, VLC, Limewire and Text Edit open.. tried to launch Photobooth and it absolutely CHOKED. Took almost a minute to launch it, and once it was launched there was a 15 sec latency from what was actually in front of the lens, to what showed up in the display.

I've been running Temperature Monitor since I bought it. When the temp reaches 62C or so, it starts to slow down a lot. Shouldn't be happening.

I also noticed I had to quit most running applications when I wanted to watch a movie full screen, or else it'd stutter every once in a while.

Its looks are quite seducing, and I admit I was pulled in by them. I really, really wanted Apple to finally give all of their notebooks backlit keys and LED displays. When they didn't, I decided to give the Airbook a try. But it just can't cut it, too many things wrong with it IMO.

Great for mobility, good looks and limited computing.


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## Adrian. (Nov 28, 2007)

I really want one...but my notebook is my main comp. I have a 1st gen mbp and I cannot bring myself to get an mba for 1800 and change when I can get a c2d 2.2 mbp for 1500 in the refurb section...


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

I think it makes a VERY good "travel" computer for anyone with an iMac or a Mac Pro, et al.

It wouldn't meet my needs as my sole computer. I burn CDs of my old radio show and other such operations which I couldn't (as easily) do with just a MacBook Air.


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## Johnny Melano (Jan 26, 2004)

I haven't witnessed any of the said issues, so far! We'll see how things go.

I repeat, it's NOT a main computer! I originally had a first gen MBP, I then bought a Mac Pro and had no use for the MBP because it was too bulky to bring around.

Now, I'm happy! I can bring this around without any issues, I transfer files between my Mac Pro and my MBA very fast with the new Airport Extreme.


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## Principal (Nov 28, 2004)

*Nice setup*

Hey Johnny how do you like the Bose Companion 3 - I've been waiting for a sale price to pick up a set.


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## Johnny Melano (Jan 26, 2004)

They're great, really.

I don't really do anything crazy for audio so it's perfect for me. If I was an audio professional I'm sure I would've gone another way but for my needs (video editing and visual graphics) they're great!

I'm addicted to their products though, so maybe I'm biased, but I have two different head phones from them, their acoustimass speaker system and these great computer speakers.

Best Buy often has sales on them, check Fridays.


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## Adrian. (Nov 28, 2007)

So I gave my old MBP to my little nephew and I am now using my Macbook 2.0 1gb as my main portable. I have an iMac but I do like to have a fairly capabale laptop. My Macbook is cutting it for me right now...would the MBA be relatively as capable as the my 2.0, 1gb and 80 gb HD?

If it can work as well as my macbook I would get one. They are so nice and sleek...hot diggity!


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

Does your Macbook have the Core Duo or Core 2 Duo?

Coming from my Macbook 2.0 Core 2 Duo, with 2GB of ram and 7200rpm drive, the Macbook Air is noticeably slower, and not nearly as capable.

Like everyone's expressed so far, it's really only meant for a secondary machine. It's alright for light work, but gets bogged down by CPU intensive apps.

Man, the screen is so nice though! I'm going to miss it.... I just hope I get a good screen in my next Macbook, because they are so hit and miss with quality... the screen my last one had was total garbage.


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## Johnny Melano (Jan 26, 2004)

Considering you had 1 gig of ram, I think the MBA will hold up pretty nicely in comparison. Go to a store, test it out, run a few apps!


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## Adrian. (Nov 28, 2007)

this macbook screen is garbage too...i think i might just get the new mbp. I dont mind the weight.

cheers


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

Yeah, I absolutely LOVED the LCD on my Macbook Pro... best screen I've seen in all the laptops I've owned (until the MBA that is).


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

Suite Edit said:


> Look at the size of that screen bezel!!! XX)


Being so thin, the bezel HAS to be that thick to give the LCD the necessary support. Sorry.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

Adrian. said:


> My Macbook is cutting it for me right now...would the MBA be relatively as capable as the my 2.0, 1gb and 80 gb HD?


Contrary to Kloan's assertion, the MacBook Air *is* a Core2Duo with 1GB and an 80GB HD. It might be a TAD slower than a MacBook with identical specs, and it's certainly faster than a CoreDuo, so the answer to your question of it be "relatively as capable" is yes.

Other than the lack of an internal optical drive and an ethernet jack, the Air suffers no "limitation" that I can see. As someone in another thread pointed out, one less USB port is pretty meaningless; if you need more than one, you need five, so a hub is the be-all and end-all of that problem, and the built-in bluetooth allows you to avoid using the USB port for anything like an external mouse or kb, so that's not really an issue.

For me, the lack of a built-in optical drive would be something of an issue, since if I had an Air I might not have another Mac around to "borrow" the optical drive of for the occasions where I'd need one (like installing software). For my wife, OTOH, the MacBook Air is perfect; she does 99% of everything she does on the net, and would only EVER use the optical drive to "rip" CDs into iTunes, which she could do "borrowing" my drive (or with the optional external drive).

The one USB port would, in her case, only ever be used to plug in a camera. She's a firm believer in the "new" mentality of "if something needs to be plugged in, it's not a portable anymore, is it?" and I have to admit she's right.


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## Suite Edit (Dec 17, 2003)

chas_m said:


> Being so thin, the bezel HAS to be that thick to give the LCD the necessary support. Sorry.


No, I guess I'm the one that should be sorry... I thought it looked out of proportion... obvisouly you must be one of Apple's engineers and know better


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## fyrefly (Apr 16, 2005)

kloan said:


> Coming from my Macbook 2.0 Core 2 Duo, with 2GB of ram and 7200rpm drive, the Macbook Air is noticeably slower, and not nearly as capable.


I'm curious as to why you thought there *wouldn't* be a drop in performance? The MBA is a 1.6Ghz C2D, with a 4200 RPM HD. Those two bottlenecks alone would be enough to make it much slower in CPU intensive apps than your 2.0 C2D and a 7200RPM HD (which MacBooks still don't ship with by default!)


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

Suite Edit said:


> No, I guess I'm the one that should be sorry... I thought it looked out of proportion... obvisouly you must be one of Apple's engineers and know better


No need to be sarcastic. As it happens, my answer comes _via an email from one of the engineers on the Air team_ when I asked him a similar question about it post-MacWorld.

It's not out of proportion, though I can see why you might think so. If my answer seemed to you to be saying that the bezel is just holding the LCD in place, then you misinterpreted what I wrote. The "extra" bezel is there to help retard any "flexing" in the cover. Once you realise how important that would be to a design like this, it becomes obvious. Or, as you seem to prefer, "obvisouly."

I'm not an engineer myself, so feel free to continue being pissy if you'd like. However, I think you can rest assured that the Air is one of the most OVER-engineered things Apple has created in quite a while, and from the responses I've gotten to questions about it, it seems clear that there's "no fat" on this thing. If they could have gotten away with less bezel, it certainly seems clear (to me, anyway) that they would have done, since that would reduce the weight, resources and cost.

Obvisouly.


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## Suite Edit (Dec 17, 2003)

chas_m, I must have mis-read the tone of your response. You gave no sources for your authoritative "this is the way it is, nothing else can be true, sorry for your ignorance on the subject" response. I "obviously" misread that, so I am actually sorry for that.  <- those little guys also help me determine the tone of people's posts, as annoying as they are to some 

I did understand your post re: the flex issue, but when a 17" MBP screen can have a similar (or smaller?) bezel, I personally see a disconnect... but I'm not an engineer either. Just my opinion, but I'm predicting that it is something that gets addressed over the next couple revs. It's just too ugly, and that was the point of my post.

..here's hoping it's fixed in rev.2 so I can buy one


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

chas_m said:


> Contrary to Kloan's assertion, the MacBook Air *is* a Core2Duo with 1GB and an 80GB HD. It might be a TAD slower than a MacBook with identical specs, and it's certainly faster than a CoreDuo, so the answer to your question of it be "relatively as capable" is yes.


I'm sorry, do you own one?

Unless you've had the opportunity to use one extensively, you don't have the experience to contradict my experience with the Macbook Air. It's more than a 'TAD' slower, capiche?



fyrefly said:


> I'm curious as to why you thought there *wouldn't* be a drop in performance? The MBA is a 1.6Ghz C2D, with a 4200 RPM HD. Those two bottlenecks alone would be enough to make it much slower in CPU intensive apps than your 2.0 C2D and a 7200RPM HD (which MacBooks still don't ship with by default!)


I was actually expecting a slight drop in performance, but from what I noticed there seems to be issues with multitasking. Overall speed is ok for light work, but as soon as more than a few apps are open, things start to get sluggish... really sluggish. I thought the CPU and ram would be enough, since my old Macbook Pro with a G4 1.5hz, 2GB configuration didn't suffer from this kind of performance drop.

So, yeah, what I experienced was a bit of a surprise. From what I've read, other people are experiencing it as well... I think a faster hdd would make a difference, but at the same time I wonder if something else is going on there to cause the issue.


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## fyrefly (Apr 16, 2005)

kloan said:


> I was actually expecting a slight drop in performance, but from what I noticed there seems to be issues with multitasking. Overall speed is ok for light work, but as soon as more than a few apps are open, things start to get sluggish... really sluggish. I thought the CPU and ram would be enough, since my old Macbook Pro with a G4 1.5hz, 2GB configuration didn't suffer from this kind of performance drop.
> 
> So, yeah, what I experienced was a bit of a surprise. From what I've read, other people are experiencing it as well... I think a faster hdd would make a difference, but at the same time I wonder if something else is going on there to cause the issue.


I could see this being a bit of a software issue, but I attribute it a lot to the 4200RPM HD. The best resource I could find on the subject is here, comparing 7200, 5400 and 4200 HDs in a MBP.

MacBook Pro - various drives compared

The 4200 severely slows down the process, which I think is a problem for MBA, especially while multitasking, which (as far as I know) requires more and more access to the swap file on the HD.


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## neufelni (Sep 17, 2007)

kloan said:


> I thought the CPU and ram would be enough, since my old Macbook Pro with a G4 1.5hz, 2GB configuration didn't suffer from this kind of performance drop.


Um, I don't think there ever was a G4 Macbook Pro.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

HowEver said:


> And contrary to that, the MacBook Air comes with 2GB RAM in all configurations.


You are of course correct. Thank you, HowEver.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

kloan said:


> I'm sorry, do you own one?


No, but I've used them (not "extensively" however). They seem quite snappy to me, but in my limited time with one I was mostly doing what I thought most Air buyers would be doing -- surfing the net, checking email, fire up a simple game, browse the file library, use iTunes, that sort of thing.

I did not notice any difference from the machine I'm used to, a 2GHz BlackBook with 2GB ram and a 5400rpm drive.

I have *no doubt* that further testing on specifically disk-intensive stuff would show you to be right that the 4200RPM drive is a bottleneck, but I stand by my assertion that the MacBook Air should not be slower than a CoreDuo (which is what the OP was asking about) in general use.

I would further suggest that the number one "app" for this machine will likely be "the internet" with a smattering of Office and suchlike -- iow, the slower disk speed is a minor, not major, factor to most Air users. The speed of their internet connection is likely to be far more important to most users. I would also remind you that Apple clearly designed this machine to use SSD drives, and as prices come down for them the "4200" bottleneck will gracefully disappear as a factor.


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

neufelni said:


> Um, I don't think there ever was a G4 Macbook Pro.


whoops.. my bad. meant powerbook... i've owned so many, i get them confused.

so, i just walked into my room and heard a VERY strange noise belt out from the MBA.... sounded like a whistle combined with something mechanical grind to a halt....

glad i'm taking this thing back tomorrow...


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## Adrian. (Nov 28, 2007)

I personally think the MBA with all its downgrades in specs is sort of a waste without the flash memory. I can see why people would get it. It is obvious why Apple made two models (one with flash and one without) but I wouldn't take the hit in the gut in the specs department without the cool memory.

Just my 2 cents.

Cheers


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

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