All right. I guess everyone has seen the new MacBook Air when Mr. Stevie pulled it out from the brown paper bag. Wow, it is thin! According to the Apple website,
MacBook Air is ultrathin, ultraportable, and ultra unlike anything else. But you don’t lose inches and pounds overnight. It’s the result of rethinking conventions. Of multiple wireless innovations. And of breakthrough design. With MacBook Air, mobile computng suddenly has a new standard.
Thanks for reminding me that I can’t lose inches and pounds overnight — gotta get back to my exercise plan. However, being “ultraportable” is exactly what Apple is trying to sell MacBook Air at. On the scale it weights 1.36kg, which is almost a whole kilo lighter than its fat brethren MacBook the unportable (2.27kg). At 0.4-1.94cm thin, you will have to buy those notebook bags with 5cm of padding so you won’t accidentally snap it in half when you throw it around.
Its CPU is a tad slower than MacBook at 1.6/1.8GHz. There is no optical drive included, i.e. at cost extra. The hard disk is either a small’ish 1.8″ 80GB or 64GB solid state drive (as an AUD$1,409 upgrade!), battery is not self-serviceable, and RAM is soldered on… It is the price you have to pay when it is designed for the niche market of ultraportable, where rivals like Sony Vaio and Toshiba Portege were used to charge their customers at a premium.
Will I buy one? No way. Starting at AUD$2,499 it is almost a whole big one more expensive than equally equipped MacBook. I know I am getting old but 1 extra kilogram is not a biggie to me. Apple knows how to design a beautiful package, preaching a message not why people will need one, but why you would want one. Being a cold hearted pragmatic, unfortunately Stevie’s distortion field has pretty weak effect on me. That’s probably why I still have not had an iPod.
But let me tell you what other ultraportable notebook has taken my fancy — Asus Eee PC. It is small. It is light. It sold like a hotcake — because it is cheap. You can buy a brand new one from OfficeWorks for $488, or less if you shop hard on eBay. It weights only 0.92kg so you probably won’t even feel it when you throw one into your bag.
Obviously there are some issues, and the Asus’ $488 Eee PC is probably not a good comparison with Apple’s $2,499 MacBook Air.
- 900MHz Celeron underclocked to 667MHz. Don’t expect a speed demon here.
- 4GB SSD is probably not even enough for your photo collection.
- 7″ LCD at an awkward resolution of 800×480 is not good even watching DVDs.
- 21-35mm thickness. Yes it is thick.
- It runs Linux.
- You need to be a midget to type on it.
But at less than $500, it has everything a person need to get work done, i.e. press Ctrl-Alt-T to bring up an Xterm — what else do you need to get work done? :) It has Wifi to access Internet, has a ethernet adapter (which MacBook Air lacks), has a card reader, runs OpenOffice.org, runs Firefox, etc. With the current climate, maybe an Eee PC would be a more prudent decision for ultraportable?
Which ultraportable would you get? Air or Eee?
I’ve got to go with you on the EEE, from a purely pragmatic approach. I like the MB Air but can’t justify the price for the value. I’m typing this on an older PowerBook that will just have to do me until the prices come down to the point where they are affordable by those of us who don’t have the discretionary income of the apparent target market for Apple’s latest offering.
I’m truly given to wonder if Apple isn’t marketing the MB Air at the same people who purchased the iPhone. Not sure if I could back that one up with hard data, but (to me, anyway) it feels a bit that way.
I’m going for the Nokia N810, myself. Similar price to the EEE, but doesn’t try to be a PC.
If I were to choose, I’d get an Eee. The Air doesn’t have enough bang for the buck. For that much money, I’d expect to have a DVD. A nonreplaceable battery is also too inconvenient. The battery is about the only thing I replace on my laptops. The iPod like touchpad though is nice.
But, as for having an ultraportable, I’ll stick with my PPC-6700. :)
@Michael — I agree that Air is marketed towards the iPhone crowd. I still don’t get why people would want to spend that much on a phone up front, when you have to sign a phone contract at the same time. But then there are people who are willing to pay at a premium to get the latest and greatest. Big thanks to them to keep the economy afloat :)
@Andrew — I think N810 is a great machine if you are looking at a browsing appliance. I actually expect an ultraportable that you can “work” on, i.e. typing up a report, do a bit of coding, etc. If I am looking for a web surfing tablet, N810 (or N800 which is actually available in Australia) will be ideal.
@Oliver — we don’t have PPC-6700 here. The only thing that came close is HTC TyTN II but that thing is expensive. I can imagine myself typing up an essay on that either…
yeah I agree about the features – I’ve wanted to buy a mac laptop for years but I just don’t move around enough to justify the cost unless I ditch my desktop (which I can’t do). A web tablet that runs linux with a stack of community-driven apps available for it is right up my alley.
I skipped the n800 because I wanted at least some kind of keyboard, and I’m eagerly awaiting the Australian release of the N810 (I’m in Brisbane).
Particularly now that podshow has hooked up a 15% discount deal ;)
http://curry.podshow.com/?p=932
While the Air looks fantastic, I think I’ll be sticking with my EEE. I mean, the Air is ridiculously overpriced in my opinion, although it may come down in time.
But I’ve got XP installed on my EEE and it does me fine. Even though it’s only running at 667mhz, I can still run Quake 3 at 60fps, runs Visual Studio, Photoshop and 3D Studio MAX perfectly. I mean, I use more intensive applications than the standard user so if it can suit me, then I imagine it’s well above the needs of most people on the market for an ultra-portable.
Yes, the tiny screen is a bit annoying and the image quality isn’t great. Yeah, the keyboard is tiny, flimsy and awkward (This is probably my main concern with this laptop) and the internal hard-drive is exceedingly small (Although you can get a massive SD-card for a little over a hundred bucks, so this is easily rectified), but you still get a HELL of a lot for $500.
came across this product on a Taiwan website today – works out to be $AUS750. http://www.kohjinsha.com/models/sa/sa5sx04/index.html (japanese website)