meh, apart from the the new touchpad, the thing is a waste of money, integrated battery?! no thanks! lack of ports and an external DVD drive, seems pointless to me, and I've even just moved to using a Mac at work and love it!
^^what he said
i think the included external dvd drive is kinda pointless. i mean, its easy to tell the world "hey, we have the thinnest laptop out there" if you drop a whole dvd drive.
i'm not sure but i think airbook + external drive = as big or bigger than the smallest...or thinnest...whatever vaio.
whats SO new and SO cool about the airbook? wireless access to other pcs and using their cd drives? come on...
i personally think this is just another marketing gag. and look at the prices
just my 2 cents
Quickie :
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1) it's not as easy as it seems to fit a mobo, gpu, high end cpu, sound chip, etc.. in the size.
2) Multitouch is not just trendy : it improves productivity for real.
3) I am impressed by the multi-graphic port out which accepts dvi, vga, and some other channels for digital output - this is something new.
4) The size and weight of my laptop are one my main concerns with it : it's a pain in the ass to carry such a monstrosity.
5) Airport wireless networking rules and is fast and highly stable
6) I suspect "remote dvd drive" (over wireless) is not only like sharing a remote drive - I truely think it must have some special,
QoS like improvement to stability/speed, Apple do not brand what they don't deliver as opposed to MS.
I recommend you check the commercial to see the real features - I'd love to see the beast in action regardless of the price.
I had a 4yo craptop, and just bought a 13.3" notebook weighing 2.3kg , with Core duo @ 2Ghz, 2Gb of ram, intel GMA X3100, 250GB HDD, DVD burner, battery lasting 5h ... for ~11,000 NOK.
We had the same discussion at work, and I looked at Apple's store for a laptop with exactly the same specs: a slightly boosted MacBook. It was ~13.000 NOK in white, and ~15.000 NOK in black.
So thanks but no thanks.
I have no problem with Windows, and I don't want to spend 2-4,000 NOK more to be a cool kid and have to find the Mac equivalent of all the softwares I use and never had a problem with.
I don't care about the hype, a bit expensive ok, but I care about having a laptop that gives me my love back and treats me with priority,
so I think - sorry for ladies worldwide - that I am falling in love.
It's not just a bit expensive to me. It's insanely expensive for a machine with no ODD and a single USB port. Yeah it's thin and light, but duh I have absolutely no problem taking my notebook in one hand, and it has 900 grams, 1 USB, a S-ATA port, an audio in, a firewire port, a card reader, 170gb more HDD space, a DVD burner and an interchangeable battery more than the macbook air and for how much ? 3,000+ NOK less.
How does/would the Macbook air gives me my love back and treats me with priority ?
Righto, but I have a thing for great bodies - let me deal with the hormone rush for the time being, I know I'd be heartbroken
if I was to consider anything long term with this thing, but how can I resist such a deep attraction?
(...Probably by buying a Mac Pro, with a little extra weight, but just as sexy).
side note: I just realized that the white Macbook I thought equivalent to my notebook doesn't have a DVD burner, aka superdrive, to get one it cost ~1.000 NOK more. Yeah!!!
I doubt I'll ever buy another Apple product again and I think that is largely to do with their idea of innovation. Sure, the computer is slim but I think you lose far more than you gain.
Okay, so my laptop weighs-in at over 3.5kg, but it has no compromises... I have four USB2.0 ports, a DVD Superdrive, 1Gb Ethernet, 17" glossy wide-screen (personal preference), a full keyboard (including numeric pad), PCMCIA and Express slots, NVidia 7600 Go GFX, etc, etc. I paid around £650 (approx. half the original retail price) for an ex-demo model with two dead pixels - that was my compromise.
I wouldn't touch a Mac for the simple fact that you end up paying more for less - the smaller they get, the fewer features they provide, the higher the price! Mac = style over substance.
As part of my work, and for my personal pleasure, I revel in the fact that I have a laptop that performs at least as well as my desktop back home. I don't care that I give my self back-ache carrying it, as I wouldn't see the point in having a laptop the size of a pocket calculator even if it was fully-featured - I NEED a big screen! One of my company's clients proudly flourished his super-miniature Sony Viao on the day he took delivery of it... it was about two days before he was tryin to sell it again because he just couldn't stand hunching over the microscopic screen and poking at the tiny keys with a pencil tip!
This just means I'm never going to be Apple's target customer, I suppose.
Accusing Apple to favor style over substance is not accurate : their OS is optimized, stable, and in general, they deliver
what they promise, they don't overuse "kewl marketing practices" - but I understand your concern with the macbook air.
I find my laptop is a pain in the ass to carry, and I have got rid of the dvd drive altogether anyway - divx I know where to get,
music I got, software for development is all that I really need on my laptop - the screen is big though, and that may be a concern.
If the Macbook air screen quality was not amazing as it is, so...
Regarding screen size, I feel very confortable with the 13" in 1280x800, if I need something bigger I can plug my 19" TFT screen although it's a bit old and only 1280x1024 but it's certainly not a big deal to get a 22" in 1920x1080 ( ~400€ ), esp. if it were for work.
Ah, but I couldn't comfortably carry a 22" screen along with my laptop to distant shores at a moment's notice... nah, my 1440x900 17" laptop screen is just perfect for Photoshop and/or ET:Quake-Wars on the hop.
I admit, Apple aren't entirely insubstantial... I'm starting to find them less repulsive. If I try really hard to think backwards, I can even make good use of them! *giggle*
LMAO @ Mas! Okay, so my laptop weighs-in at over 3.5kg, but it has no compromises... I have four USB2.0 ports, a DVD Superdrive, 1Gb Ethernet, 17" glossy wide-screen (personal preference), a full keyboard (including numeric pad), PCMCIA and Express slots, NVidia 7600 Go GFX, etc, etc.
I'm not sure what the big attraction to the Air is. I have a 1.5 GHz 17" Powerbook that (IMO) is perfectly compact and light enough for travel yet large enough so that I'm not really compromising either. It's about 3 years old so I may upgrade soon but it won't be to a Powerbook Air. With all the problems I've had with Apple and this laptop I probably won't ever purchase a Mac I see no reason to sacrifice substance for style either.
Yeah - I'm picking on micro-laptops as much as Apple machines, I suppose. Being an ardent gamer, of course, I demand power! lol
Of course, this immediately negates the purchase of an Apple for the simple fact that it just doesn't do games. There just aren't enough releases to satisfy me, even for capable Apple machines... and even if there were, I'd have to buy everything twice; once for Apple, the other for IBM-compatible PC.
Didn't mean to step on any toes - hence the repeated assertion that such preferences are entirely personal - I don't presume that my opinion is any more valid than another's.
What's interesting to me is that the Macbook Air is fueling discussion from people who wouldn't have considered an ultra-portable otherwise.
There are primarily 3 kinds of laptops:
Desktop replacement: Macbook Pro, Dell XPS, Dell Latitude D8xx
Standard laptops: Macbook, Dell Inspiron, Toshiba Satellite
Ultraportable: Macbook Air, Toshiba Portege R200, Dell Latitude D4xx
Pretty much everyone who has griped about the performance or lack of ports has indicated that they're really in the market for a desktop replacement or a standard laptop rather than an ultraportable. Comparing the Macbook Air to any of these is like comparing apples to oranges.
If you compare apples to apples, the Macbook Air stacks up rather well against the Toshiba Portege R200. The MBA has a faster processor and 4x as much memory as the Portege, but it sells for around $400USD less at retail.
Agreed - I wouldn't have a Vaio - but the ultraportables are stylish, over-priced, and very, very light-weight, much like a Mac... just without the Mac bit!
Oh yes! PSP Rocks! It rocks that much, I'm using the word 'rocks' to describe it, which is something I never do. Of course, sadly, it rocks only because I've hacked both of mine - otherwise, they'd probably be gathering dust on a shelf somewhere, rather than doing the multitude of fantastic things they do now.
posted 01-16-2008 15:33
