Macbook Air review

Cheb — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:55:06 +0000

Well well well…

I needed a new computer for work and as you might already know I am a sucker for Mac – so what did I do? Go out and get a Macbook Air, of course!

Overview

Coming from a 24″ iMac and I guess to a certain extent, a ‘smaller’ 15″ Macbook Pro, I was hesitant that I would have a hard time getting used to the 13.3″ – albeit, wide-screen display. Boy was I wrong!

The 13.3″ screen is so much brighter than I am used to – that it even looks brighter than the iMac’s screen – which is bright!

I was worried that the specs on the mobile notebook would not be enough for what I needed – something powerful enough to handle PSD’s and other design documents (and obviously run those applications!). What I found out is that even at 1.6Ghz Core 2 Duo, this little notebook is a small beast.

Day-to-day running

Sure, applications take just a little longer to load and when saving big Photoshop files, you might have to wait an extra few seconds – but all that is relatively minor nuisance when considering whilst the application is running there really is no major difference between this notebook and the higher-end Macbook Pro’s; showing that the 2Gb RAM actually does help a lot and you could say, makes up for the somewhat-slower CPU.

I won’t be running games on this lil’ thing anytime soon – but if that’s the reason you are getting this notebook then you are going to be sadly let down. With shared graphics, the furthest I want to take this masterpiece of design is Flash production.

Battery life

Battery life on this machine is very, very good! I’ve come from a few issues with past batteries; especially as an early-adopter of the 15″ Pro. I find that on a full charge with full brightness and functionality as standard I can get at least 3.5 hours in. Drop down the brightness and change Energy Saver Optimization to ‘Better Battery Life’ and you might just found out that the Apple-claimed 5 hours is not just a marketing ploy!

Design

Being a web design blog I figured that this would be a huge part of this review. I’m not going to lie and not say that one of the main reasons I got this notebook (as apposed to other similarly-specced notebooks on the market) was the form-factor and design. It just simply amazes me and others how small this little thing is! Sure, you miss out on the benefits of a CD/DVD drive (you can still use another computers’ drive through Remote Connection!), and you might have the iPod’s 80Gb hard-drive entailed, but boy does it look HOT HOT HOT!

The keyboard, is definitely THE best keyboard I have EVER typed on! Not only is it evenly-spaced, and full-sized, but it is back-lit, just like its predecessors – which makes it awesome to type on at night!

The trackpad is SUPERB to say the least. It is huge compared to every other laptop I have seen, whether 13.3″ or 17″ in size. The new gestures you can make now, coming off the iPhone/iPod Touch platforms are not only a time-saver, but cool!

For example, you can scroll down a page if you run two fingers simultaneously in a downwards direction; or if you wanted to get a little more geeky, run three fingers side-by-side from the right to the left of the trackpad and quicker than you can say ‘Bob’s your uncle’ it has taken you back a page in your browser or while using Coverflow to look at your doc.

So to wrap this up here is my top pros and cons of this marvelous piece of technology.