Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Wow, world's thinnest laptop

Ok, Apple has unveiled the thinnest laptop the world has ever seen - Macbook Air. But it is not the lightest. So, this is not ultra portable; maybe another 1 lb less; then we can call it that. With this thinness comes sacrifices. And indeed sacrifices. First, you don't have a DVD drive; you have to pay extra for an external. Granted, you can use the Apple's accompanying software to do a remote drive access; that is, after installing this software on either a networked Mac or PC, the Macbook Air can use that computer's DVD drive remotely for installations. But if you are traveling, you cannot really take your entire network and all the computers with you just to use the DVD drive. Also, the Macbook Air does not come with a Ethernet card; this means, you can only use wireless access. If you are business person traveling, not all hotels have wireless access from rooms. So..... Also, the heat from the cheap must be extremely hot too. It will not be a laptop I don't think. Unless, you have a huge heat tolerant and don't care having the bottom of a Macbook Air imprinted on your thighs. This computer does not offer an upgrade path for memory or harddrive - 80G standard. What you see is what you get. One good thing is you can have a solid state harddrive; this means, less moving part. The solid state drive is like a glorified memory stick.

In short, this new laptop is not for everyone; but if you are an executive only care about taking notes, surfing the web, replying emails and not doing anything funky, you may have a chance using it. Show off.

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