Product Review: The MacBook Air

The MacBook Air is the newest addition to the Mac family. This laptop is the world's thinnest laptop measuring in at only .76 of an inch. This laptop however is not ultra portable due to the huge thirteen inch screen. This laptop comes complete with the iSight built in camera, a LED backlit display which is very high quality and the huge touchpad which responds to multi touch just like the iPhone.

Inside this laptop we are looking at a re modeled 1.8 GHz Intel Core Two Duo CPU. This chip was custom made for the small frame of the laptop. This computer comes standard with 2 GB of RAM which is very nice to see so now we won't need to spend seven hundred dollars to upgrade anymore. This computer also comes standard with an 80 GB hard drive. The hard drive is actually the same hard drive they use in the iPods. We all know this is a very small hard drive so I would personally suggest using an external hard drive these are very cheap to buy and can add up to 500 GB of storage to your laptop.

Some more features that were included was integrated Bluetooth which is good for people who like to connect their cell phones or other accessories to their laptop. This laptop unfortunately does not have a slot for a mobile broadband card and there are no slots for SD cards. There is also no Ethernet cable slot on this machine so if you are in an area with no WI-FI you are screwed. These features were most likely tossed to make the computer so thin but then again some people need this features in order to accomplish their work.

The biggest thing that was not included in this laptop was an optical drive. Yes you read that correctly there is NO optical drive of any sort on this laptop. That for me is a major turn off. How can a company except this to be a portable laptop for business workers without including an optical drive. The reason this laptop had to get rid of the optical drive was to save power for other components like the processors. Apple's solution is that the MacBook Air can utilize the optical drive on any computer on your network. This means if you need to install a program from a DVD onto your MacBook Air you will need to put that DVD into a different computer on the network then the MacBook Air can wirelessly access that computer and that DVD and install the program. That process seems like a pain especially if you are traveling and only have one computer with you.

When I got to use a test system I was pleased with the multi touch touchpad it was very easy to use and I did not feel like I would need an additional mouse. The key board is also full size so writers will not be disappointed. All in all this is a decent computer at best I am not one for paying 1,799.99 dollars for something that only comes with a 80GB hard drive and no optical disk drive. I would be more interested in spending that kind of money and getting a laptop with all the features that I feel will be necessary. But hey I am sure many people will still purchase this laptop.