MacBook Air Review Roundup

Thousands of consumers might still be waiting for Apple to start shipping the MacBook Air, but that hasn't stopped the MacBook Air from showing up in the news. In fact, the MacBook Air has risen to the top of our "Most Popular Laptops" list is record time. Love it or hate it, this ultra-thin laptop will likely continue to make headlines during 2008.

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While we don't have the inside connections to get our hands on a pre-release MacBook Air (we can't all be John Mayer), we're glad to see the folks at the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Newsweek have managed to write summary reviews of the MacBook Air after only a few minutes of hands-on time. Here's a quick roundup of "reviews" from other sites ... just in case you need a MacBook Air fix until your's is delivered:

Wall Street Journal: "Apple's MacBook Air Is Beautiful and Thin, But Omits Features"

USA Today: "MacBook Air: The sexy kind of skinny but with some flaws"

Newsweek: "The Skinny on the MacBook Air: Size matters, but has Apple gone too far?"

Overall, the consensus is that the new MacBook Air is a marvel of cutting-edge design with a few too many sacrifices. Apple designed the MacBook Air with a built-in, non-removalble battery, and no access to the hard drive or RAM. If those limitations aren't enough to bother you then factor in that you only have one USB port, no optical drive, a slow hard drive in the base configuration, and a processor that's slower than the previous generation MacBooks.

Of course, the team here at NotebookReview.com will have our own in-depth review with hands-on video of the MacBook Air in the coming weeks. Stay tuned if you've been searching for a review with more substance and less hype.

 

i have the same opinion. apple left too many things out

 

I give it a thumbs down. When I first saw it, I thought it was really cool. But then I started thinking how practical (or not practical, rather) it is.

No optical drive. OK, you can use Remote Disc, but doesn't that mean you have to be near the other computer you're using? Doesn't make much sense traveling. And you still can't watch DVDs through it. Sure, you can plug in an external; but doesn't that beat the objective of easy to travel with?

Only one USB port? Seriously? My old laptop had one USB port... it was a Dell made over 5 years ago. This means I can't even plug in a USB mouse and a flash drive at the same time... give me a break.

No ethernet port? Seriously? Yeah, cause we all know that Wifi is great everywhere these days...

iPod hard drive? So not only is it slow now, but it's got that great reputation of failing after a year. Great news. Of course, you can get yourself that awesome SSD with 16GB less storage... for $1000.

I think that personally, a 0.25" and 2lbs savings over the regular Macbook just isn't worth it. Especially with all the lack of options, and for $700 more. I'll take a plain Jane vanilla Macbook any day thank you very much.

 

These reviews tell us exactly what we knew already. Its thin light and has a beautiful design but sacrifices many things that many laptop owners feel are nessesary.

 

Sucks that Apple has only been releasing these notebooks into the hands of very "apple friendly" publications.

 

When will they start shipping? They took alot of things out to make it look good which really sucks

 

I can't imagine why this would surprise anyone. Nor can I realistically blame them; when this thing passes the hype and gets into hands of actual road warriors, it will be crucified, and mostly for the non-user upgradeable battery. That's certainly not going to help initial sales.

 

Apple isn't exactly known for having full-featured gadgets. I mean, come on, 7 generations of iPod [or was it 8?] and STILL NO FM RADIO. But hey, the coolness factor is their selling point. So yeah, this is yet another legendary Apple product.

 

The MBA will work well for those who have powerful desktops and need the super small MBA for basic tasks. I think its a great device.

 

That's the biggest problem IMO. If you saved a file on a flash drive and want to print it, you have to save it to the hard drive first, can't listen to an audio CD on the computer while a flash drive, etc. It just isn't convenient. Even a Bluetooth mouse wouldn't solve all the problems.

 

The only thing the MBA has going for it is the thinness/looks.

The features or lack there of, are in lack of a better word, a joke. Even if it is light for a 13" notebook, it is still a 13" notebook (with a fat bezel surrounding the screen). In other words a huge footprint for what many like to call an ultraportable. Being an ultraportable geek myself, it is simply to large for me to even consider it, regardless of how slim it is. I think it is more impressive that the 14" Panasonic Y7 with a built-in optical drive (and thin bezel) only weighs about 3.3 lbs. Or that the rumored 13" ThinkPad X300 (with much more features) weighs only 2.5 lbs without optical drive or about 3.1 lbs with optical drive.

Apple is good at sleek design and marketing, I'll give them that. They are good at keeping to a consistent and very nice/unique design standard. Many other manufacturers could learn from that.

But if you look at what other manufacturers have been able to come up with, the MBA is not spectacular anymore. Sure it is very thin, but the thinness is derived from removing most standard features/connectivity ports. Take the Toshibas and how thin they have been able to make i.e. the R500 with a built-in optical drive (and most of the usual connection ports) while still only weighing about 2 lbs.

In any event, Apple is always good at creating a stir and get people all emotional about what is essentially just another gadget.

 

hehehe

 

Totally agreed...
From my point of view, the 13" form factor is quite big to be called an ultraportable though it's lightweight.
At first, it sounded very impressive to me as I'm an apple fanboy but considering the battery isn't removeable...ohh...that's totally a deal-breaker for me. Yeah, Apple is expert at creating and playing people's fanatical mind to their products.
I hope the next MBA could have more USB port and removable battery is a must

 

It is more design then performance...

 

Perhaps 2008 is the year “coolness” and “hipness” takes a back seat to more prosaic qualities: simplicity, functionality, and lowest TCO. MacBook Air misses on all counts.

With Vista becoming prevalent, I can't see how Windows PCs are positioned that much better.

 

The reviews are lackluster, I mean come on, the guy says that a CD drive is the thing you put DVD / CDs in.

They all talk about the HD space, but what about the RPM? It's a 4200 RPM drive!!!! WOW, that is extremely slow!!!

Whatever, I give up, if you buy one you're loaded, and spend your money how you please.

 

"...a generous two gigabytes of memory."

Any laptop over $700 has 2GB now. Also, those three publications routinely list new Apple gadgets as "news."

 

Thanks for the roundup, fellows. If you are going to get one for a real hands-on review, will you be trying the SSD version? It would be great to see how much SSD improves performance if at all....

 

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4171

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3962

Heres 2 SSD reviews...

 

I've already stated my opinion of this laptop here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=211103

It not only sacrifices upgradability, functionality, USB ports, the optical drive, and the battery, but also nearly all standard laptop ports. In addition it has poor build quality. While it is a beautiful thing, its not a good notebook.

 

I am behind the MBA idea in capturing future trends; the future trends being increases in the use of Wi-Fi, P2P or the downloading of software and solid state drives.
The up and coming utilization of flash memory chips as hard drives may soon take over optical and magnetic medias. Wi-Fi connections not only are increasing daily, they also seem to save resources lost from wiring and networking technologies. The last and most controversial point is the transfer of applications independent of optical media.
Honestly, the only CD's I ever use now are my Window's CD and any other CD's to get my internet to work. Any other drivers or applications I have come from the Internet.

All major drawbacks, which are lack of removable battery and CAT 5 inlet and high costs, will be solved as time goes on.

I am in no way, shape or form a Mac enthusiast or fanatic, but this laptop is definitely a step towards the future.

 

I wonder what the failure rate will be like for non-SSD Macbook Airs. If they fail as much as they do in iPods, at least 25% of the 1.8" drives will break within 2 years.

In an iPod, these drives spin up only once an hour to pick up 64MB of music. Keeping them spinning all the time while doing intensive stuff like renting movies off iTunes (lol), or running BitTorrent, will kill them even faster.

 

Another major drawback for the MBA would be this, MacBook Air SuperDrive does NOT work with other machines. I found it on engadget
Whoa...

 

I can't wait to see the real numbers a year from now. I just cannot see this thing selling very well, due to the long list of limitations. They failed to listen to their customers who wanted an ultra portable notebook. Instead they got a very large ipod!

 

Thanks. We'll have to see if the one Apple uses has the 0.2ms access time that some of these SSDs have. Otherwise it won't bring any speed improvements... With a fast SSD it should be a nice machine for non-CPU bound tasks.

 

its not small. just thin

 

I thought this was funny:

 

My Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC doesn't have an optical drive. The only time I need an optical drive is to install disc-based software. I download much of the software I now buy. Instead of burning CDs I use USB thumb drives. To play games I create CD image files with Alcohol 52%.