Very nice, but not perfect

By Christopher Tran (LA, California)

This review is for: Apple MacBook Air MC233LL/A

I'm a PC, but I'm also a Mac. A MacBook Air (MBA) to be exact. I am very much into the design so that it only made sense. I, for the first time as something like the Dell Adamo, Z or Latitude ENVY13 the HP, but the Dells were strong under-powered-way processor. The HP was crazy powerful, but heftier than I would have liked. The width of the Euro-design gave the MBA design a run for her money, but it begins with two large and you can easily knock at $ 2,500 with the bells and whistles, Yikes! The HP Envy 13 is very powerful and only ultra-portable with the i7 processor. But for what I'm going with this for the mobility and price to me is more important. The Adamo seemed the price and features of the MacBook Air best match, but the finding that the design, function and price pretty much a draw (personally I thought the MBA was a very small edge on the design), I settled on the MBA, because of the fact that I can run Windows 7 as well as Mac OS X (which I also build for different purposes), and better quality. I must say that the unibody design makes things really feel as if it was carved from a piece of aluminum. There is minimal flex to speak. Closed, it just feels so nice in your hands.

The 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor is much better than the 1.2 and 1.4 that are in the Dells is more than enough for my use. It could have been a little humility, I would not have an Intel Core 2 Quad desktop computer at home. This includes HP ENVY meaningless.

The screen is more than adequate and much better than a netbook. Because it is so light, it can really can go everywhere a netbook. The beautiful keyboard and trackpad was also refreshing.

The solid state drive is also nice, but after some use, I do not really find them all that are different from a standard HD, maybe a little faster, but not that noticeable. It is certainly cooler and quieter. Some users have complained always a bit warm but I think they have had an HD instead of SSD.

And now for the few drawbacks:

No optical drive - since I do not want too often to need it, is no big deal. I already have a Blu-Ray external drive, I used to install everything. Once, the only image I can use it as an opportunity occurred Blu-ray DVD movie, but even this will be rare when I'm in a hotel room somewhere, and carried out of my head.

Connectivity:

No Ethernet, big deal! It's all about wireless!

Weird Mini DisplayPort - not a big problem as I do not know imaging connect an external monitor to so much.

Just a USB - This one, I admit, is pretty significant. It was a bit of trouble with USB devices swap a little bit, but again, I only use a handful of times multiple devices (mainly USB Mixer DJ Console and an external USB HD with the music I want to mix). I have a little Griffin USB "Splitter", which is nothing more than a tiny USB hub, but it had some trouble enough power to the HD from that one USB port, so I had a USB cable to the add Mix (the audio clip was strong during the mixing and transformation),. So keep it in mind if you have daisy-chain planning three disks, a soda cooler and a reading light for the USB connection is not easy. It works with most other (low powered) USB devices in order.

RAM - This is the other big CON! While 2GB of RAM will probably be ok, but I would like to have the option to add more. I have 8 GB on my desktop and I actually use (photo and video editing, Media Center functions, Terminal Services, etc.)! Although I do not do much that (maybe a little photoshoping) on this thing, it is sufficient that killer application that requires at least 4 GB of RAM that I can not use that will drive me nuts!

I have a first generation Macbook Pro from work and I always loved the design of IT. This takes things at the next level. I'm primarily a Windows user, and this seems a bit more seamlessly with Windows as the MacBook Pro (although with the latest drivers and software updates for Apple's Boot Camp, it was better). It's kind of weird that I went with a Mac to run Windows, but it was a calculated choice. If I had wanted for a fully functional laptop, it would probably have been an HP or Dell.