New 11 inch Macbook Air
For this past Christmas (2010) I got my wife the new Apple Macbook Air. The machine replaced her tired 17″ HP Pavillion (actually a hand-me-down from my Mac upgrade in 2009). Our new addition has been in service four months now, more than enough time for me to share with you my thoughts.
This machine is incredible. It is certainly the easiest notebook computer to transport. I recently placed it inside a folder with some papers on the way to a meeting. If you are working with it in you lap, you hardly know it’s there. If portability is key, this is the way to go.
With daily use, the Macbook Air has not failed once in its four months. My wife, accustomed to freezes, blue-screens, and frequent re-starts in the PC realm has been beside herself. Another big win has been the air play functionality, which is available on any OS X Mac and every iOS device. If she wants to listen to music throughout the house, one click sends her entire iTunes library to our Apple TV and out to the home theater.
This machine is incredibly fast. The current gen Macbook Airs come equipped with all flash storage instead of a HDD, which means super fast boot speeds. It will go from start-up (after being completely shut down) to surfing Safari in about eight seconds. This blessing can be a curse however. If you need a large amount of internal storage you may find the on-board 64GB inadequate. There is no way I could get by with that, I have trouble with my Macs 250 GB HDD. If you do not need a large storage capacity though, the speedy and compact flash storage is fantastic.
This machine is a Mac, and sports everything you would expect from a Mac. Absolutely no regrets from us. Some balk at the $999 price point, but remember this is a purchase that will have no problem doing its job 6 or 7 years and even beyond. My last PC notebook cost nearly as much and was ready for retirement two years later. If you can, and the form factor of the Macbook Air suits you, I do not believe you will wish you had bought a less expensive machine.
delighted to share. 