Comments on: The confessions of a secret MacBook Air fan (and reluctant Windows powered blogger)

By: swissfondue

swissfondue — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:33:07 +0000

Now that I have my MBA since a few weeks, I'm posting some feedback. Damn the thing is thin. People will look twice. I often hear "wow" when people see it. It is also light. My back appreciates this. It has a very strong case. The screen is awesomely bright, has enough resolution and the backlit keyboard is good to have. The form factor (half the volume of the 12" G4 PowerBook) allows me to take it everywhere.

Speedwise it does everything I need and does it well (iPhoto, Photoshop Elements, Final Cut Express, Word, Scrivner, Bento, iTunes, Garageband, Readiris OCR, etc.) I have slimmed down versions of my iPhoto and iTunes Libraries on it, all my documenst and hundreds of PDFs and a bunch of divx videos. Still about 30GB free. Only Bento makes the rainbow wheel appear (must be coding, as it is a 1.0 app)

Installing software wirelessly by using my iMac's disc drive works fine.

Battery life is good at average 4h30. Charging on the other hand takes longer than that.

Heat is not an issue and the MBA is mostly silent. But if I watch HD video or lots of Youtube, the fans will rev up (but not annoyingly so) and the bottom right gets quite warm. Also HD video will shorten battery life by about 2 hours.

The multitouch trackpad is fantastic. I can select, open, move, zoom, rotate, right-click all with using up to three fingers from one hand. No more right-clicking on the mouse button under the trackpad. It is like a finger ballet which becomes second nature. Using older notebooks, this is a feature I miss straight away.

By: swissfondue

swissfondue — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:22:55 +0000

Now that I have my MBA since a few weeks, I’m posting some feedback. Damn the thing is thin. People will look twice. I often hear “wow” when people see it. It is also light. My back appreciates this. It has a very strong case. The screen is awesomely bright, has enough resolution and the backlit keyboard is good to have. The form factor (half the volume of the 12″ G4 PowerBook) allows me to take it everywhere.

Speedwise it does everything I need and does it well (iPhoto, Photoshop Elements, Final Cut Express, Word, Scrivner, Bento, iTunes, Garageband, Readiris OCR, etc.) I have slimmed down versions of my iPhoto and iTunes Libraries on it, all my documenst and hundreds of PDFs and a bunch of divx videos. Still about 30GB free. Only Bento makes the rainbow wheel appear (must be coding, as it is a 1.0 app)

Installing software wirelessly by using my iMac’s disc drive works fine.

Battery life is good at average 4h30. Charging on the other hand takes longer than that.

Heat is not an issue and the MBA is mostly silent. But if I watch HD video or lots of Youtube, the fans will rev up (but not annoyingly so) and the bottom right gets quite warm. Also HD video will shorten battery life by about 2 hours.

The multitouch trackpad is fantastic. I can select, open, move, zoom, rotate, right-click all with using up to three fingers from one hand. No more right-clicking on the mouse button under the trackpad. It is like a finger ballet which becomes second nature. Using older notebooks, this is a feature I miss straight away.

By: martin

martin — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:47:49 +0000

Very very cool, hope you’re pleased with the MacBook Air, do let me know how you get on!

By: swissfondue

swissfondue — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 09:53:42 +0000

I’ve sold my 12″ PowerBook and am waiting for my MacBook Air to ship. I love the PB: its design, the touch of it, the size and the silence.
The MBA has the advantage of being lighter and comes with a much brighter and with more screen real estate. Also the processing power of the MBA should be between 2x and 4x that of my PB. I can at last watch those HD trailers!

I rarely used the second battery that I bought with the PB. And going from 100GB to 80Gb should be manageable.