“Apple has seeded journalists at three of the nation’s most widespread publications – The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Newsweek – with early MacBook Air review units. The first reviews from these publications began cropping up earlier this morning. A detailed summary of each review, and some observations, follow.” OSNews will review the MacBook Air too, as soon as Apple NL has review items to send out.
… has yet to convince me to buy one, as I see more cons in each review than pros. It’s pleasure to see it? Make hi-res photo and put in frame.
Yes it’s an enticing product but I would rather get a MacBook, because they are faster, have an integrated cd/dvd drive and cost much less (I can get a refurbished one for just $999 CAD vs a $1899 MBA).
I would rather buy a MSI GX700-7525VHP Extreme.
Has for 1299 euro:
# Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 (2.2GHz; 4MB L2 Cache; 800Mhz FSB)
# 250GB S-ATA harddisk 5400RPM
# 2048MB DDR2 667Mhz (2 x 1024)
# DVD-SuperMulti Drive Dual Layer/ 3-in-1 Card Reader (MMC/ SD/ MS/)
# nVidia Geforce 8600M GT 512MB GDDR2 VRAM
# 17 WUXGA TFT (1920 x 1200) non glare/ Internal 1.3M Webcam
And you can if you want pay 300 euros more and you have a Intel Core 2 Duo T7800 (2.6 GHz; 800MHz FSB; 4MB L2)
Bye Bye Macbook Pro (2800 Euro).
ref:
http://www.laptops4u.nl/categorie/msi-laptops-322.html
Edited 2008-01-25 10:32 UTC
Dear friend, that MSI of yours, a brand that btw I highly respect, has a 17″ screen.
How does that relate to the discussion?
If you’d recommend a Thinkpad of the X-series, I’d cheer. Give me a Thinkpad over “1 usb no ethernet need special screwdriver for battery” Fried Air bling any day.
By the way, a 17″ laptop is not a laptop. It’s a somewhat portable desktop, or should I say, a monster.
I noticed you didn’t mention how big that laptop is or how much ith weighs. Nobody is buying the MBA for its performancs or specs, they’re buying it for it’s size and weight. Comparing the MBA to a huge heavy laptop is completely missing the point. You may as well compare it to a desktop system. If you don’t need a small and light laptop then the MBA obviously isn’t for you.
This reminds me of the first iPod: Too expensive and too little storage space for music and it didn’t do as much as the other MP3 players.
While the iPod despite the price sold like crazy, I’m not sure this one will, particularly since it’s competing with both MB and MBP. Both are clearly better specced and much cheaper than the MBA. I don’t regret buying an MB just before Christmas one bit.
But like the iPod, eventually this machine will become the standard form factor for laptops. It will be copied by others, and it will be the way to go for the other laptops in Apple’s range. Over time, batterylife, CPU speed and storage space will improve. It’s an evolutionary laptop, one that’s likely to push the envelope for what’s acceptable for laptop sizes in 2-3 years time.
This first generation MBA isn’t attractive enough for practical, standalone use, but I hope the specs will eventually be upped enough to justify the price.
‘It will be copied by others’
You have to remember like a lot of other things Apple was NOT the first to make a small and thin laptop.
The worst part is that Jobs is actually lying about it, trying to tell people Apple made the thinnest laptop.
Other companies have already made thinner laptops, with a lot better specs and not as crippled as the Apple machines.
But the Apple fanatics will of course still buy it (wonder why).
The worst thing is you can’t change the battery easily. Try to get a screwdriver throught customs control in an airport, in hope you could change the battery while flying cross atlantic.
True, and many of them cost a lot more than the MBA.
OS X and its aesthetic appeal. No need to wonder any more. For most of Apples customers, no OS X means no sale. Just like some people refuse to buy hardware that doesn’t work under linux.
Most trans-atlantic flights these days have power outlets at the seat for powering your laptop. So no need to swap batteries.
I don’t know about the thinness thing, frankly I couldn’t care less if we’re talking a few lousy mm, but the McB.Air sells at €1700 -1 here in Rotterdam, while I can get a ThinkPad X61s, that weighs about nothing as well, for about €1450 to your doorstep, specs 12.1″ diag., C2D L7500 1.6 GHz LV, 2GB upgradable RAM, 160GB 5400rpm drive, 1,31 kg (yes, that’s lighter than the McB. Air), three year warranty, ethernet, THREE f?&*ing USB ports, fingerprint reader, an easily replaceable battery, the option to attach it to a dock, forget about the other details (Cardbus, Firewire, SD, etc.).
The great downside. it ships with Vista Biz, but hey, it has the Trackpoint, which no one I know of wants to live without on a laptop – it’s great once you get used to it. Why do you think Dell is using it now too on its tiny ones. And it runs Linux without a single blob, I might add. OS X as well, but that’s a different story.
Now you feel I’m getting paid to say all this.. (If only!) well, I’ve only got an old second (third?) hand €350 PM X40, hence my enthusiasm, but I just wonder, has the Thinkpad ever been hyped up to the extent the Mc.B Air is now??
Edited 2008-01-25 13:46 UTC
I agree that the ThinkPad is a good deal compared to the MBA. At least if you aren’t concerned about design.
Lenovo laptops will never get the hype Apple laptops get, simply because they can’t compete with the design. Most people aren’t drooling over the amounts of USB ports or HDD space, they are drooling over the sleek looks, which is very important in this age of life-style devices. And the fact that it costs a bit more probably makes it even more attractive. At least initially.
I am curious about those thinner laptops, better speced than the MacBook Air, that I have never heard of, and their constructors who aren’t jumping on the occasion to call Apple on its lies when that would be a fantastic promotion for their products. Not speaking of all the professional journalists who, by their silence, are complicit of those lies.
I tried in vain to find one of those companies. Could you help me, please ?
But Mommy, I don’t want to use the $49 battery charger, I want to use the $129 spare battery.
I don’t know… I’ve owned several laptops and have never once in my life taken the battery out to replace it with a spare.
Perhaps you’re not Apple’s target audience. And you’re offended why?
I almost thought that was some sort of exercise in self-parody on his part. I know that Apple product launches are notorious for silly, triumphalist claims about how the new Apple product is the “best/first/most ____ EVER” – but “thinnest laptop”? Who buys a laptop on that criteria? I’ve owned several sub-3.5lb laptops myself and the thickness never even entered into consideration when choosing them.
2 out of 3 already talking about short batterylife
apple at it’s best…
Yes, the battery is thin also but most seem to miss the fact that the battery isn’t difficult to change, even if it isn’t as easy as previous machines.
As with early iPods, we’ll find that people with money will be the first to buy and use the machine and eventually, it will end up taking over the portable lines and become one size fits all.
Give Apple an impossible task and tell them that they have no chance and they usually do something impressive. That’s Apple at its (not it is) best.
Edited 2008-01-25 03:31 UTC
You missed point. This isn’t about replacebility. It about workign 2:30-3:30h on battery, instead of Apple claimed 5h (of allegely normal work with wifi on).
The pro is Remote Disk itself, or that it actually worked fine?
Isn’t it pretty much the same as just sharing the drive as usual?
hmmm then how about scrapping all that and just sharing? At least you would be able to access your movies and music.
it seems the special part is that the support is built in at the EFI level on the air, so that one can in theory use it to boot a air.
or at least thats the imression im getting. if im wrong, its indeed no different then sharing a optical drive using smb or similar.
You know of a way to share physical audio CDs and video DVDs across a network connection? I was pretty certain this didn’t exist without first ripping them to disk…
“You know of a way to share physical audio CDs and video DVDs across a network connection? I was pretty certain this didn’t exist without first ripping them to disk…”
Yes. Put the CD or DVD into it’s respective drive and set up sharing to share the drive across the network. Works every time. No need to rip to disk. Granted this is only one at a time, though is only one at a time with the “Remote Disk” feature as well.
Yeah just sharing is one way, but there is also a few more lowlevel ways like “ata over ethernet” and simular.
“You know of a way to share physical audio CDs and video DVDs across a network connection? I was pretty certain this didn’t exist without first ripping them to disk…”
You can just share the drive using Windows File Sharing or Samba. This capability has been available since Windows 3.1
You know of a way to share physical audio CDs and video DVDs across a network connection?
http://www.videolan.org/ for example.
or any other video streaming server software. friends of mine used it to share same dvd across the rooms on the same network. downside of this is that all have to watch at the same time, same stream. uPNP spec is also based on allowing those things. you can simply put dvd drive with vobs into shared space and there it is. If your client device supports playing vobs natively…
actually, now that you mention it..
in linux we have these things called “features”, if you are a mac user you are not familiar with them, however, if not, you may be interrested in a particular one called “Network block device”
🙂
Remote Disk is more than just sharing a drive across the network… At least from my understanding of it, it’s like a mini version of Net Restore… ie, you can boot a single Mac off the network from the machine with the remote disk software and either install from disks or disk images.
So it’s just like PXE then, only for wireless.
If you’ve ever set up a PXE environment, you’ll know that what Apple will offer will be around 1000 times easier than PXE. If even journalists can do it, then it must be.
Edited 2008-01-25 08:27 UTC
I don’t believe the audience for the MBA is the digerati crowd that know how to share, but rather executive types who want to easily carry their Keynote presentations around with them.
Having played around with it a bit, Apple’s solution is pretty cool and is being touted as a “pro” for the same reason Time Machine is. In Time Machine’s case, backups have existed forever, but Apple put a pretty face on them for the ordinary mortals in this world. It’s the same with MBA’s remote disk thing.
They’re using the HDD, not the SSD drive. That makes a big difference in power consumption. It’s also just right for a laptop. What gives?
I assume the reviewers only received the base model MBA, so no chance to test the SSD model. Guess we’ll have to wait for comparison reviews of both models.
The quoted battery life should not be dependent on a costly additional extra. A bit like saying a mobile phone battery life is 400 hours [but only when you buy the big battery]
The MBA is pathetic. I was waiting for a 12″ PowerBook successor but Apple thinks 12″ laptops are too small. Their engineers are really lame. Who needs a thin laptop? The existing designs are thin enough – my Thinkpad x60s is already thin. It’s just totally pointless to shrink the thickness of these machines. A portable and light laptop must be small in terms of width and height.
And why do they put so tiny screens on their ipods then? According to this way they should make 13″ ipods.
If i want big screen i connect an external monitor to the laptop.
You have to consider that the 12″ was 4:3, which means that the 13″ models aren’t much deeper and just a little bit wider.
If you compare the 12″ Powerbook with the 13″ MacBook (regular one) you’ll see that the MacBooks is only 0.8cm deeper, 4.8cm wider and 0.25cm thinner. The MB also weights 0.17kg more.
So the biggest difference is the width, but seriously if 4.8cm (1.9″) bothers you enough not to buy a computer then you shouldn’t have a hard time understanding why some people would want a thinner and lighter laptop like the MBA.
You just don’t get the point. Sorry, i think you’ve never used a portable laptop.
It’s not about the 4.8cm even if that’s huge when it comes to portability.
The worst thing that this pancake laptop suffered too many feature cuts to be so thin. It almost became useless.
You compare the MacBook and the 12″ PowerBook but you forget that the new 12″ Powerbook (alias MacBook Pro) would be a lot lighter than its predecessor.
Let’s compare the latest Thinkpad x61s and the aging 12″ PowerBook:
PB: 2.1kg with optical drive + battery
x61s: 1.3kg with battery.
The difference is not 0.17kg even if there’s no optical drive in the x61s which can’t be heavier than 0.3kg or so…
I think they stopped designing the 12″ laptops because 4:3 is not in fashion. At least they think so.
I did have a 12″ PB about 6 months before I upgraded to a MacBook, and I can’t say that the MB is any less portable. It’s still small enough to fit in a tiny backpack or messenger bag along with other things. And the wide screen suites my work much better so to me that’s an improvement well worth the extra width.
I understand that there is a market for 12″ 4:3 laptops, but I’d think that it’s mostly corporate users, and that’s Lenovos main target.
I honestly don’t think that a 12″ 4:3 MBP would sell very good, I even think a 13″ widescreen MBP would have some problems, but it would be a nice option.