★ One Week with The MacBook Air [A REVIEW]

Steve Jobs announced the MacBook Air in January of 2008. I was in the office and it was special because this would become his last Macworld Keynote Address. He announced a few new iPhone features and software offerings but the main attraction was the thinnest and lightest notebook ever released with a Core2Duo processor and full size keyboard. It was the MacBook Air and I was unimpressed. Primarily, the price was a huge turn off for me. 1.8Ghz Core2Duo processor with a 64GB SSD for over $3K was insane considering I had spent $2499 for my 2.44Ghz 15″ MacBook Pro at the time with more ram and a larger hard drive. This didn’t mean that I didn’t lust after the machine but soon the price became an issue to me and 6 months later, netbooks became all of the rage.

The netbook didn’t capture the hearts of portable computer users but its price did and the $150 entry price of a netbook was very appealing. The fastest and best Dell 10″ netbook still only cost around $650 which is incredible for a full featured notebook. There was one thing missing. Mac OS 10. My entire workflow is based on The Mac OS these days and these netbooks scarified cramped keyboards, small monitors and CPUs that were only capable of running Windows XP. I upgraded to Windows Vista in November of 2006 and never look back so in 2009 why would I run XP with an underpowered Atom processor on a 10″ screen.

I was torn. between comfort w/ a price or mediocrity w/ savings. I decided to spend the extra money and purchase a MacBook Air. I could have purchased a cheap netbook in late 2008 and have the exact same specs that are available now but I waited, saved and it was worth every penny. If you’re considering a netbook, take a step back and think about the MacBook Air because the difference is truly night and day.

As many of you know, I have a brand new 3.06Ghz 17″ MacBook Pro with every option I could afford (aside from the 8 gigabytes of ram) but it’s heavy. I love using it in the office and at home. It sits at my desk 10 hours a day plugged into an external monitor and a slew of peripherals. It comes home and plugs into another monitor with more peripherals and I was lugging it to the cafe, meetings and even weekend travels for business but the more I carried it, the more I realized how large the machine is and began to loathe the thought of lugging it around. When it’s at home or at work, I’m happy but anywhere in between, I just wasn’t enjoying its company and regretting the purchase. of course, this was only 25% of the time so I was dealing with it.

The MacBook Pro unibody has a severe flaw in its edges are razor sharp and after 30 minutes of use, would begin to cut into my wrist skin. My typing sessions generally last 6 hours and I was fed up with this and decided something had to be done. Either I stick silly putty on the notebook or switch to a laptop that doesn’t cut into my wrists. The MacBook Air is ultra sharp but the front part of the computer is only .16″ thick which means I barely notice it’s there. The incline of thickness starts at nearly 10% of an inch and grows until .76″ at the back of the notebook. I barely notice the rise but it makes typing extremely comfortable. The primary reason for the MacBook Air is finishing my book.

I’m writing this blog post on the MBA and my wrists haven’t started hurting yet. it’s an incredible feeling. I can not type comfortably for 5 hours without plugging in and without any wrist pain. The machine was supposed to be slow and comfort / portability were the only reasons I was getting this machine. I was wrong because this machine screams and is extremely fast given it’s half the size of my MacBook Pro (possibly more).

My machine is the 2.13Ghz Model with a 128GB SSD. It’s the fastest MacBook Air available and is fast enough for everything I do day to day and on the go. I have yet to plug it in to my 24″ OR 30″ monitors (work & home) and treat it like the powerhouse that it isn’t and I’ve only used it on the go, for meetings, travel & quick action items. For this, it’s perfect.

The only bottleneck is the 2 gigabyte of ram limit. It begins to choke once my typical 10 apps are open and I have it configured with zero startup items. My 17″ launches with 10 apps that open upon login and now I’m ready to start working with 2.5 gigabytes of ram in use. the MacBook Air couldn’t handle that kind of load and that’s ok because it will never be my primary machine.

I’m continually amazed just how fast it is. Most people say it’s due to the SSD and they would be correct. A Poweruser on a MacBook Air without the SSD is a mistake. If you can’t afford the 2.13 w/ SSD, then get the last-gen 1.86 w/ SSD because the loss in raw speed will be made up for by the solid state drive. Applications launch quickly and suddenly and I never put the machine to sleep. it’s fast enough to simply hit the power button and be using Apple’s Mail app within 15 seconds then deal with waking up with a 50% battery life remaining.

Speaking of battery life, I only write with Wi-Fi turned off and brightness at 50% and for this, I get 5 hours of solid battery life with Pages.app opened full-screen. It’s perfect and I never ever deplete the battery completely.

The MacBook Air has been the best electronics purchase I’ve made since the first iPhone and it’s changed the way I work, play & get things done. Suddenly, I’m grabbing the MBA when it’s time to head to meetings, hop on a plane or send off an email before bed. It’s light, quick and accessible for every situation. Of course, there are downfalls.

My Shure SE530 headphones won’t fit in the audio adapter. My AT&T 3G card won’t fit in the USB port. My 30″ display can’t be driven by this tiny thing. It just can’t drive that high of a resolution. The Machine gets very hot when maxing out the CPU and it lags when I’m pushing tons of applications at once. Other than that, the machine is great and well worth the money I spent. If you’re looking for a desktop replacement to plugin all of your peripherals and keep running for days at a time, this is not the machine for that. The MacBook Air is for the road warrior and if you can find the extra $600 over the price of a netbook and you’re a Mac user, the experience will be 10 times as good.

A few thoughts on having multiple machines. Get MobileMe. MobileMe sync dock items, preferences, notes and mail rules between both Macs within seconds of powering each system on. It also syncs calendars contacts, mail and a few other small items to my PC running Outlook and to both Macs. Changes are synced instantly and pushed to other machines. Also, get SugarSync. It’s $49 a year and syncs up to 5 computers and stores 30Gbs of data on the cloud. The way it works, I sync my host machine (The MacBook Pro) with SugarSync one time. Then on my Vista box and MacBook Air choose which folders to keep in sync with the MacBook Pro. I chose Documents, Downloads, Desktop and a few other preference / app folders like my to-do list. SugarSync looks for changes every 30 seconds and syncs up so every time I open any computer, all of the files are in perfect sync just like I were on the other computer. It’s amazing and they have an iPhone app so I can view documents from anywhere in the world if I have a cell connection. The same goes for their site. go in an Internet cafe anywhere in the world, login to sugarsync and view / download your files that were on your MacBook Pro that was just stolen or is offline and you can’t login to it. Oh and a final aspect to MobileMe is the fact I can remote desktop into my MacBook Pro or MacBook Air from anywhere in the world if the machine is turned on. This has been valuable a few times for random reasons.

With MobileMe & SugarSync all three of my computers are in sync. My Vista box is at home playing movies, MacBook Pro is plugged in at work and the MacBook Air is in my backpack while I’m heading to the cafe. All in sync, all online and all ready to serve me in any technological way I need. The MacBook Air completed this puzzle and it was the best purchase I ever made.