october 25 2010 review by testfreaks

The MacBook Air impresses with speed and build. The lightweight of the newest MacBook is remarkable. The addition of preconfigured SSD makes the performance of the MacBook Air feel much faster than any previuous macbook. Of course if you add an SSD to any current Mac then they will have the same speed. While there are definite negative aspects of the MacBook Air for critics to attack overall it adds innovation to the MacBook line with its light weight, instant on and one-month standby features. If you are worried about losing features by going to the Optical driveless MacBook Air, fear not as the newest Apple laptop is up to the task.

Compared to a netbook the MacBook Air is as far from a netbook as possible. Surfing on a Dell Mini 9 could be slow and ponderous, while web pages immediately opened on the MacBook Air. Trying to run any form of video was not always pleasant on the Dell Mini 9 while everything worked on the MacBook Air.

Test Setup:

Tohe 13.3 inch base version Macbook Air which features a 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 6MB on-chip shared L2 cache, 128 GB SSD, 2GB of DDR3 @ 1066 MHz, Nvidia GeForce 320M using 256 MB of DDR3 SDRAM with Mini DisplayPort output and a 13.3 inch display capable of 1440 x 900 resolution.

Keyboard

Sadly missing from the MacBook Air is a backlit keyboard, meaning those who wish to work in dark environments better be comfortable with sightless touch-typing. The keyboard is full sized with 78 (U.S.) or 79 (ISO) keys, including 12 function keys and 4 arrow keys.

The new MacBook Airs are available in two flavors the 13.3 inch model which is the same size as the prior models and the newest size, the 11.6 inch version. Some say that this smaller model makes that version Apple's equivalent of a netbook, however it has a full sized keyboard, NVIDIA GPU and a Core 2 Duo CPU.