Macbook Air Review

Your TV screen goes white. A melodious female voice serenades you with a catchy tune. An attractive hand lowers a manila envelope onto the screen. The hand opens the envelope and removes an impossibly thin laptop computer. You ooh and aah at its amazing sexy design, and rush out to buy the MacBook Air.

You rush home and turn on your brand new computer. It is so light you are temped to throw it in the air a few times, but then you remember you spent 1800 dollars on it, and think better. You have fun with the multi touch touchpad, and drool over the backlit keyboard (being careful not to allow any of your spittle to fall on the priceless object) After having fun for while you decide to begin using your new toy... erm computer.

So you decide to begin putting your CD collection onto your new Mac. After much poking and prodding you discover your new 1800 dollar laptop lacks a feature that computers have had for over ten years now, a CD drive. So you run back to the store, buy the MacBook Air CD drive, for a solid 100 dollars and return home.

So you've finished putting your CD collection onto your computer. Well most of it anyway. With the 80 gigabyte hard drive (a bare minimum for computers these days) you couldn't even come close to the full capacity of your 160 gig iPod classic. So you decide you want to email all your friends and tell them about your new computer. You disconnect your Ethernet cable from your old, outdated computer that you bought six months ago. But after more poking and prodding you discover your new MacBook Air has no place for this standard cable. It is far too sexy to have anything that useful. So you run back to the store again and for 300 dollars your purchase the Apple Time Capsule, so you can take advantage of the Air's wireless capabilities, and have an extra 500 gigs of storage.

Now that you have emailed all your friends about your amazing new MacBook Air, you decide you want to listen to some of your music. When you hit play you immediately notice something strange. The sound, its flat and boring. Then you realize that your 1800 dollar laptop lacks something that vinyl records of fifty years ago had: stereo audio. When you plug in your headphones, the stereo returns. So in an effort to get the sound quality typical of decades ago you return once again to the store (by now you are becoming good friends with the staff) and purchase some speakers.

When you get back to your home and plug in your speakers you decide realize you are hungry from running back and forth to the store and want to go down to the store to get some food. Never one to be without your technology, you decide to put your music collection onto your iPod. USB cable in hand yet another session of poking and prodding ensues, but it is all in vain. You have used up your one and only USB port on your CD drive. Because you do not want to go to the trouble of plugging and unplugging your CD drive you drive back to the store (for the fifth time) and purchase a USB hub.

So you synch your iPod with your new MacBook Air, and head off to the store. As you browse you notice an ad for a movie, and remember that you had made a movie a few months ago and it would be great to edit it with iMovie. So when you return to your home you take your video camera, grab the FireWire cable protruding from it (a very typical cable for camcorders), but poke and prod as your may you find no space for your FireWire on your MacBook Air. So for the sixth time you return to the store and purchase an adapter that converts your Firewire into a USB connection. This slows it down significantly and as such it takes several hours to import your movie.

Just as you are about to begin editing you get a call from your friend. He wants some help with something computer related, but is vague about exactly what he wants. Not wanting to be unprepared you pack up your MacBook Air, as well as the accessories you have been purchasing. As you struggle to carry it all you realize that you needed to spend several hundred more dollars and carry around several more pieces of hardware in order to get basic operation that the regular MacBook could have gotten you for 700 dollars less.

It is not possible to upgrade the RAM on a MacBook Air. The processor is slower than the regular MacBook, which is much cheaper. The battery is not a standard laptop battery. Meaning, that when the battery needs to be replaced (as all rechargeable batteries will) you cannot do it yourself, you must take it down to the nearest apple store and have them do it for you. The installation is free, but the battery will cost you 129 dollars.

Despite all of these shortcomings, there are advantages to this device. If portability is an important issue, than this laptop may be for you. It also has many of the advantages that other Mac laptops also have. This includes the amazing Mac operating system, a built in webcam and microphone, and the ever present apple sexiness. The multi touch touchpad is a great piece of technology. The MacBook Air has twice the RAM of the regular MacBook, and though its processor speed may be on the lower end of the spectrum, the operating system is designed so well that you probably won't notice the difference.

So if portability is your main concern, and your needs are limited, then get the MacBook Air. But if you want a computer that will deliver basic features, then get the regular MacBook, or for more power the MacBook Pro, or PowerBook.