MacBook Air, The Compromises

Apple's new laptop computer certainly is an interesting thing on the technological scene right now. The fact that it is only .76 inches thick has the whole world buzzing. Now, at that absolutely tiny level of size, how can this laptop still have anything to compare to the technology of today? Believe it or not, the MacBook still has enough power to run most of the applications you would need to run......now I'm not saying Final Cut Studio or anything, but Photoshop will still be chillin' on it. Here's basically the down-low on what you get with the standard setup of this system; a 13" screen, 1.6 GHz Intel Core Duo, 2GB of Ram, 80GB Hard Drive, and integrated graphics. This is more than enough to suffice a standard Mac user....except when it comes to the price.

For this lovely standard setup, you will be shelling out over $1,800. Yikes! You could get a much better windows based laptop for that price. To be honest, that's one of the only things that really turns me off about this fellow. Just how bad of a value it is. You compromise a lot of things to get this nice of a package. You don't get any form of a Optical Drive (I would have at least included an external one of some sort), and you also only get one USB port. Which I could never live on due to the fact that I am a USB hog and think a computer should have at least 3 to provide. You also don't have an ethernet port to speak of, although you can buy an external one. It's compromises like these that make me seriously wonder why someone one would go for this.

I can see portability being an issue, it always has been for many people. But for me it has always been the actual size of the laptop, not thickness. Considering the MacBook Air's screen is 13", it really doesn't give it much of a REAL upper hand over the MacBooks in my opinion. Surly the price will decrease over time and make this more of an appealing offer. (Apple had Intel custom design special, smaller, processors to put in these puppies that I believe are part of the large price point.) For now though, the MacBooks seem to be quite a bit better value, and really don't compromise that much portability either.