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[perkiset]

[nutballs]

lol.

The thing I dont get is why are people calling it a netbook?
it runs the full OSX? Its not gimped is it?

[perkiset]

Not gimped at all, but not high horsepower either. 2G standard, 4G for another hundy and that's it. Drive size is reeasonable and being all SSD is very interesting... Between the pad and the MBA and Steveo's comment that "this is the future of notebooks" I think the predictions that the hard drive industry are about to start slipping hard may well be true. Processor is no barn burner but pretty good. So it's way more than a netbook but not really a notebook. Pretty niche-y IMO, although I have one client that says she adores hers. Full OSX implementation, it's a for reals Mac. I'd just not put anything too heavy-liftish on it. 

[isthisthingon]

   Totally.  Funny thing is the macbookair is far more interesting to me than the iPad - except for the price which defeats the purpose of a thin, mobile, life-aint-over-if-you-drop-it-on-the-ground type device.  1K is a silly if not offensive entry price into the Mac world. 

[perkiset]

@ "entry into the Mac world..." - I don't think this thing is an entry level beast at all. I think it's for the very specific Mac user that has very specific needs and knows what they are. Entry level would be a normal MB, not even a MBP.

I need to go play with one. Not because I want it, but because PinkHat might.

She has a real issue with weight of her notebook. Even as small as her 15" MBP is, it's still a lot for her to carry. The new 13.5 looks pretty interesting as a mobile rig for her. I've seen some videos and yeah man, it is no netbook when it comes to speed - especially boot. If the only criteria is a race towards cheapest, then you're right - this is a lot. But again if the battle is value then this *may* have some significant advantages in that space. Gonna have to go play with one to see. This is pretty significant IMO:





It's similar (IMO) to the days of a "portable" and a "laptop" - my Panasonic portable was just about the size of the original AT box, except it had a monitor in the face of it (a 7"!!!) and the keyboard strapped to the face to protect the monitor when traveling. That was bad enough (pricewise) - but if you went all the way down to the Toshiba that Sluggo had at that time it was ridiculously expensive. So I guess if really really small and fast is your #1 point, then from a value perspective this does a good job. It's not for me. But I can see where it would be for others. I'm going to take PH to the Apple store and see if selling off her MBP and going this direction makes sense - especially since most of her storage is in the cloud now, she doesn't need that much except a strong word processor, strong network connections and a for reals keyboard. She's not into the bluetooth/iPad bit, so again this might be a reasonable way for her to strike the middle between an old-fashioned notebook computer ( ) and the portability of iPad like devices and cloud access.

[vsloathe]

Thin is not that impressive anymore. Make it thin with a core i7 or better, 8GB of RAM and a moderately new video card, make it so it doesn't heat up to 900 degrees with those specs...then I'll be impressed (those are the specs of my notebook but it is not thin and you could literally dry your hair using the video card exhaust port while playing any 3D game).

[perkiset]

This thin is. It's impossibly thin.

It also doesn't seem to get very hot - spent a good deal of time with one before ordering PinkHat's new top of the line model. She has volunteered to be my "completely in the cloud" girl and this new MBA is her ax of choice. We'll see and I'll let you all know.

[kurdt]

This thin is. It's impossibly thin.

It also doesn't seem to get very hot - spent a good deal of time with one before ordering PinkHat's new top of the line model. She has volunteered to be my "completely in the cloud" girl and this new MBA is her ax of choice. We'll see and I'll let you all know.

You bought it?! Perk, come on!! You are like the ultimate fanboy Steve likes

[perkiset]

It's purely for my stock. 

Actually it's for PinkHat who has needed a new machine for a bit, and has volunteered to be our CloudTestDummy. But I'll certainly get my time with it ...

[perkiset]

Update: The thing is frickin' bomb.

After working on it (installing Office, iWork, you name it) for about an hour then grabbing my 17" 'book I was amazed at the difference. My notebook feels like a big fat dinosaur.

Of course the 'Air does not have a DVD drive (you can USB one though, that's how I installed stuff), it does not have an Ethernet adapter, and Apple only sells a 10/100 USB adapter, so if you require gigabit your SOL. But the battery life is hot (rated @ 6 hours, we've seen about 5 and still doesn't need to charge) and the display is gorgeous. Keyboard feels just like mine. The think is so damn thin that it almost feels like you could use the edge closest to you to slice bread. Boot time is just several seconds - the SSD in the thing makes disk access amazingly fast. Shut down is in about 3 seconds. Sleep and wakeup are as fast as you open/close it. This is going to raise the bar. The price point is very reasonable for what it is and the bang-for-buck (given what bang you're looking for are the items I've outlined) is excellent. The quality of the engineering is evident in every millimeter on the thing.

Will I get one: absolutely not. Well, not in anything resembling the near future, anyhow. I use my iPad for virtually everything I do as a road warrior except for when I need something really special (serial connection to something, read/burn a CD). When I need a lot of mobile horsepower I drag my incredibly heavy, clunky and undesirable notebook 17" MBP . I have less and less tolerance for having to carry anything so obtrusive. Interestingly, I don't even like reading my daily RSS feeds on OS-X anymore - the pad readers are much nicer. Feels more like I have a book/mag/newspaper in my hand.

But for PinkHat: She needs more than a 'pad when she is consulting, but equally dislikes carrying her notebook. This little device is 100% perfect. Since I am now starting to move all of our document storage out to the cloud it makes even more sense (The piece missing is to push all of my movie/music content out there - but I'm going to wait to see what Apple does first. I've a feeling they'll do a better job than me). So since she runs Windows from our cloud, runs client apps from our cloud, has a couple different access options now (VPN right into her machine, MobileMe cloud, our storage cloud) the lack of TBs of storage is immaterial.

Net-net: Apple has done another fine job of slicing right at a particular user-niche and raised the bar for it. It is NOT the do-everything-be-everything notebook. If you choose to carry/use a single machine I don't think this is your bogey. But as a mobile companion to a more sophisticated rig it is excellent. 9 out of 10: the 1 point is that I think they should still keep a wired ethernet, but I get why they excluded it.

[nutballs]

USB 2 Ethernet as a backup, wifi most of the time. What other limits are there really? Since almost everything exists as a USB thingy.

[perkiset]

Zactly.

But don't be trying to install any more ram. or hard drive. There'll be no "user serviceable parts."

I bumped hers to the top processor and 4G rather than 2 ($100 each) to max the machine out. I'd recommend anyone else do the same.

[perkiset]

HOLY SHIT DOES THIS THING MOVE FAST.

Just installed the Citrix Receiver on the 'Air. I am quite well accustomed to how long it takes. It BLEW DOORS getting installed. Clearly, the SSDs make a profound impact on performance. Since my other installs were predominately DVD based I did not notice it. But downloading and installing was well beyond the fastest I've ever seen - it was simply incredible.

Now that we are well past the initial boots, updates, install reboots etc and we are "in production" with the little thing I am getting more real life examples of its prowess. Boot? About 8 seconds. Shutdown? About 3. Anything disk related is incredibly quick - so paging on a huge Word file is smooth and feels super fast. The only downside now is that PinkHat's nails fight with the keyboard style - her older MBP had the sort of "deep dish" keys that were more prevalent a few years ago, as opposed to the sort of "surface mount" style found in the new MBPs and Airs.

Several sources are now saying that the Air is the best value for the money available - I get it. I was unimpressed with the first one and was prepared to relegate this one to Interesting Curiosity. Now I am inclined to say Demo Of Notebook Industry Future.