MacBook Air Impressions

I’ve had my MacBook Air for a couple of weeks and thought I would jot down a few thoughts about the new machine…

• Pictures don’t do the machine justice. It is so incredibly light and thin that I sometimes forget that it is in my bag. As an added bonus the power adapter is a hell of a lot lighter then the gigantic MacBook Pro one, which significantly cuts down on the weight I have to lug around.
• The machine is really comfortable to use on your lap as it is light and it doesn’t get very warm. The MacBook Pro got ridiculously hot.
• The display is gorgeous. Although I probably would have chosen a matte screen the glossy display is growing on me.
• The keyboard is really comfortable. Although I like the new mapping of the function keys for play / pause, Expose and Dashboard I miss having a function key mapped to toggle display mirroring / extended desktop.
• I was surprised how well the USB Ethernet dongle works. All you need to do is plug it into the USB port on the laptop and the network is available. As someone who has used Windows in the past this is probably the most impressive part of OS X — no dialogs, no warnings, no alerts — just a working network!
• The lack of ports doesn’t bug me until the Ethernet dongle is connected to the computer. Apple should have made it a splitter with both Ethernet and USB. The USB port has enough power to drive an external SuperDrive, so perhaps it could drive both Ethernet and a USB port at once.
• Everything seems as fast and responsive as my first generation MacBook Pro. I spend most of my day in Entourage, Word, Safari, NetNewsWire and Keynote and this computer has no problem handling any of ‘em.
• I have 31GB left on the hard drive, but haven’t installed the Adobe Creative Suite yet. I think I will be a little more selective this time around and only install Fireworks. It is the only part of the suite I use somewhat regularly.

This laptop is by far the best laptop I have ever owned (high praise) and I have no qualms about it being my only computer. In fact I couldn’t imagine going back to lugging around the MacBook Pro.

Comments

[Paul]

Hey, Ben! If you bring the Air to MIX08, I'd love to see it! Looking forward to hanging out with you and the gang at MIX this year.

[Ben Skelton]

It will definitely be there!

[Neil Blake]

Hi Ben,
I'd be interested to know if you have had the need to run Parallels or VMWare Fusion on the MBA.

If so, how was the performance in this scenerio?

[Ben Skelton]

I haven't run either on the MacBook Air because the HD is so small and I don't want to fill it up with a virtual machine. I tend to just use Remote Desktop connection and connect to a Windows machine when I need to.

Seems like it would be fast enough though!