Well I've had my MBA for several weeks now. I picked up the basic 1.6/HDD model. Here's a quick review:

I've been using ultralights for ~5 years. I've had the Dell X200, Thinkpad X40, Thinkpad X60s, and Thinkpad X61s. I've been anti-Mac since the early 90s, and only gave Apple a REAL shot once the x86 units with Bootcamp shipped. I now have a 24" iMac, a MacMini on my HDTV, and my gf has a MacBook. I use both OS X and XP on my Macs. I've been gripping my Thinkpads and thought that I'd never give them up. With their solid build quality and ultralight designs, I felt that they were the Benz of laptops. The other ultralights felt like crap in my hands compared to the Thinkpads (the Sonys, Panasonics, etc).

I finally bit the bullet and bought the MBA. Even though I was running Mac OS X on my Thinkpad X60s, I wanted a real Macbook with built in iSight to use iChat video while on the road. No other video chat comes even close to iChat with iSight.

I haven't had a optical drive in a laptop in 5 years, and there has NEVER been an occasion where I've missed it. Let's face it -- if you have a need for CDs or DVDs, you're living in the past. I haven't purchased a CD in over 12 years and I've purchases less than 5 DVDs for myself ever. I will never purchase a Blueray disc. I don't have a standalone DVD player in my high end home theater setup. Downloaded media is where its at. Also, I haven't had to plug a laptop into a hard wired ethernet connection while on the road ever. I carry an Airport express to plug in if the location I'm at doesn't have WiFi. So I didn't miss the optical drive or ethernet port at all. I don't use a DV camera, so I didn't miss firewire.

I did miss the large hard drive. I have a 200GB 7200rpm drive in both my x60s and x61s. I download a ton of stuff from Usenet, so that's where most of my drive space goes. I knew dropping down to an 80GB would required a few behavior changes. Also, I was a little concerned about now being able to carry a spare battery. I use a Sprint data card while on the road, and the loss of the PC Card slot bothered me as well.

I've been doing extensive traveling in the UK, so I purchased one of those high speed USB GSM "modems." This thing is FAST. Also, I switched over to an external USB Sprint EVDO revA card for the states.

Ok, first thing I did was install XP through boot camp, and load every utility and app under the sun that I might need on the road (XP side). I then installed Paralles on the Mac to access my bootcamp partition without having to reboot. That all went fine. I installed Office 2008 and the Adobe suite on the OS X side.

I bought this thing for iChat. I was having a problem where after about 20 minutes of video iChat, the machine would overheat, shut down a processor and then freeze up. I called Apple and they said take it to an Apple store. I went into one and they gave me a brand new unit. After reloading everything, this one works fine.


The first thing that I noticed about the MBA was the screen. It's simply beautiful and is a huge upgrade from the Thinkpad. The x61s is the same weight as the MBA, but has a 12.1" Ultralight screen with a 4:3 format. It's also only has a 1024x768 resolution. Moving over to the MBA's 13" widescreen was a huge leap.

I'm a big fan of IBM's eraser head pointer and scroll button. I'm not a fan of trackpads. The MBA's trackpad is simply amazing. The two finger scroll works far better than IBM's scroll button. I was also worried about the lack of a right click button. Surprisingly, the two finger + click think works better than I thought. It's OK, but I'd still prefer a dedicated right click button.

The keyboard . . . it's fantastic. I always felt that the Thinkpads had the best keyboards of any laptop. The MBA's feels much better. The backlit keys are also a great feature. I just wish there was a way to force the keys to always stay backlit. There probably is but I haven't looked into it.

I found that I don't miss all the hard drive space. I now just access my huge data across the network, and still have plenty of room to keep a heap of movies on the book for travel. Sure, if a bigger drive comes out I'll upgrade, but this is fine for now.

The battery life is fine. I get about 3 hours of good use with the screen on bright. I was getting about 2 hours on my x61s with the slim battery, and about 5-5.5 with the huge battery.

Overall, it's just a damn sexy book and I can't keep my hands off it. I love it.

Ok, so after using it for a few weeks, I picked up one of my Thinkpads that was collecting dust in the corner. I can't believe it, but it just feels so OLD now. The screen looks awful and the keyboard doesn't feel that great. Also, the Thinkpad feels HUGE compared to the Air. I've seen so many people saying how the Air isn't that much thinner than other books out there. YEAH RIGHT! The MBA is .7" at it's THICKEST point. It really tapers down on the sides, which makes it feel extremely thin. The rectangular box shape of normal laptops makes then feel huge in comparison. Also, with the 8 cell battery, the Thinkpad x61s is significantly heaver than the MBA. I would always travel with the big 8 cell, so the MBA noticeably lightened up my shoulder bag.

I won't give up my MBA for anything now (except a next gen one). I don't see myself using my Thinkpads ever again. Sure, the new thinkpad x300's specs look good, but it looks just like an x61s with a better screen. That's a huge improvement, but it still not in the same league.

MBA is my favorite travel book. If the "loss of features" is an issue for you, you're simply an old timer and using out dated technology. I highly recommend the unit to any frequent traveler.