Originally Posted by
UALOneKPlus
Sorry, the way I read that page is that you can install another OS, but from within Mac OS only. Also, Walter Mossberg's review seems to indicate also that if you want to install Windows, for example, you would need to have the $99 super drive.
installing windows under boot camp (dual booting) requires a real cd/dvd optical drive (not necessarily apple's). installing mac os x itself or mac software does not and it can be done wirelessly. i'm not sure if windows can be wirelessly installed in vmware fusion or parallels desktop, but if not, it's likely that it will be added in a future release.
There is no magical way to automagically access shared network drives without any OS, unless Apple has some how defeated network protocols and come up with its own BIOS version of network detection and sharing via wifi (highly doubtful).
actually, that's exactly what they did. macs have efi (not bios) and apple added the ability to connect with a wifi network and look for published drives. when the user selects the network boot disc, the mac establishes a secure connection, transfers a small kernel, boots it, and then it mounts the network drive and pulls down whatever else it needs from the dvd. it's basically an extension of what they were doing for network booting.
If the MBA hard drive is wiped clean, there would be no OS to handle network connections and sharing, so how could the MBA access shared network connections? Unless there was a hidden partition that runs an emergency OS with network connections, that would be impossible.
there are no hidden partitions. it's in the efi firmware.