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After owning it for a few months I noticed that I would get home and my back would be in agony from carrying so much weight around dally. I ONLY watch digital movies now. Yes, this has been a bit annoying a few times (Especially since the Air has a disabled USB port turned off inside of it), but I have gotten around this by carrying a tiny USB splitter, and have needed to use that maybe 3 times total.I have to admit however that I also have a full MacPro, which I keep all of my files on and that the Macbook Air is my portable office. The other question people ask is about the air only having one USB port. I seriously cannot understand people who are breaking these. My back-pain at the end of the day is gone and in fact I constantly forget I have it on my back.
one of the only problems I have had with its size is finding a backpack that doesn't weight more than the air itself (I ended up going with the Buzz by Tom Bihn).I have edited THOUSANDS of photos in photoshop, put together movies with iMovie and Final Cut Express, written short stories , watched movies with EyeTV and have done pretty much anything I did on my Macbook Pro. That being said, it is a less powerful machine so I will sometimes see freezes, most which occur in Safari (which I no longer use).I have dropped it, thrown it on my couch, and carried it to 3 countries and 7 states. I have owned 3 previous Macbooks, and the last one I owned before this one was the the 17in Macbook Pro which was an impressive machine, with an impressive weight. If you are on the fence, I would suggest getting it. I no longer own any DVDs. whats the point of wasting space in my house with DVDs I may watch once or twice. But as with any Apple, I would also get an extra year of Apple Care.
I have the USB drive to install programs requiring a DVD, which I have needed maybe 5 times total. I decided that was enough was enough, and I went down and I purchased my Macbook Air the day it came out.The Macbook Air is extremely light, thin and pretty sturdy. I move everything that I have on it over the desktop when I am home, and am not sure I would be able to survive with only an 80 GB drive, but as I have 2 terabytes of data, I am sure you would understand why.If you are interested in buying this machine I would suggest staying away from solid state drives for now, as they are more expensive for the size and the failure rate appears to be higher than normal hard drives. as I havent treated my exactly well, but I do understand it is a portable computer which are all delicate pieces of machinery.People invariably ask me questions about it when they see my in public, one is "Dont you miss your DVD drive." And my answer is always no. People wonder how I can watch movies, and you know. However, I LOVE my Air. Ive only needed it once in the last 10 or so years, but it saved my life (and about 30,000 photos).
so I ended up buying the time capsule too. I gave it 2 stars just because its an apple product. One USB port is never enough and although I knew all these facts before I bought it and I do have another macbook older version I just struggle with this machine constantly. Don't fool your self you WILL need a cd drive and you will end up buying an external one anyway. its hard drive memory so small, its hardly can enable you to store ANY THING. buy the time I am writing this review and after saving all my files on my time capsule, I have only 23 GB left (mostly consumed by the OS and the updates) on my hard drive. the machine getting so slow now and the hard drive is cannot be upgraded.
`Nuff said. Previously as a PC owner I appreciated the user friendliness, intuitiveness and reliability of Macs. Also, the back light for the keyboard, though superfluous, it definitely adds to that `cool' factor which is trademark of all Apple products. However, let's start off with the positives.
However, after about 30 - 45 minutes of use, it gets uncomfortably hot (if it's laying on your lap). First, if you are at all familiar with Macs, I don't need to sell you on the operating system. It's awesome. Like a lot of people I'm a big fan of Apple products. Word processing isn't a noticeable problem, but loading software takes irritatingly more time. There's no need to worry if you're wondering if this paper thin computer can handle getting tossed around in your backpack.
Now that I've gotten all the major positive elements out of the way here's the big reason why I would dissuade you from purchasing this product: Performance. When you first turn on the MBA, it performs at speeds you would expect.
Internet surfing becomes a frustrating experience as pages take longer and longer to load, plus watching videos and playing on-line games becomes an excruciatingly stultifying experience.If you intend to do simple word processing work and write e-mail on a computer that's very portable then this may be the product for you, but given the price tag, there are plenty of low cost options that can deliver the same service. Therefore it is with great reluctance and disappointment that I write this review of the Mac Book Air.
If heat was the worst of its problems this would be a very different review, but unfortunately the problems only continue from here. Another overwhelmingly positive feature is what most distinguishes the MBA from every other computer: Size.
It's incredibly light, portable and surprisingly sturdy. With the heat the computer slows down considerably.
However, if you intend to do anything that requires more memory and speed, over time those activities become problematic on the MBA.
I would say for being Apple's first contender in this space, it is a HUGE success, despite some of the asinine reviews I have seen. It's a productivity booster if you figure you can have your laptop with you at all times.
A lot of reviews were negative because the reviewers were morons and somehow thought this machine would perform like a $5000 17 MacBook Pro. Well It has been a couple months of constant use, and the hype is all gone over the MacBook Air, so what do I think of it now.IT IS GREAT.Specs for the machine I have:CPU: 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 DuoRAM: 2GBHDD: 80GBok, ok, let me go through the Pros and Cons.Pros:- Extremely portable- Great battery life- Very light weightCons:- Only 1 USB portWhat it is for:- Writing- Email- Web surfing- Light business applications- Travel- Simple graphics editingWhat it is NOT for:- Video editing- Advanced photo editing- Virtual MachinesWhen it is all said and done, this is a great machine FOR ITS INTENDED USE.
It is so nice to be able to just pick it up and take it anywhere on campus with no trouble. When you look at this machine for what it is, a super portable and lightweight laptop, it does a great job.
I use the machine as my main laptop at work. I really have not had any issues with this machine as my main machine, and that is saying a lot since I switched to this machine from a top of the line 17 MacBook Pro.
"no optical drive :(" my response to that is , it's 2008 get a clue.I still think it's amazing they were able to cram everything they did into this machine.
This laptop broke after just a few uses. Being the first time to choose a mac air, I was needless to say, very disappointed. Apple support, which I fortunately never needed to use for my ipod, was not the least bit helpful. I would recommend a netbook or a dell laptop, save yourself the headache.
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