Hilarious, check out Steven Levy's theory on how he lost his MacBook Air:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/120052/output/print

Let me just add that since the first report I have had more instances of young woman approaching me and asking, "Can I touch it?". The most recent at a meeting I was attending with a couple hundred people when I was approached by a perfect stranger.

That's the funniest Mac story I've heard since the original Mac came out and somebody noticed it has the functionality of an Etch-a-Sketch plus you don't have to turn it upside down and shake it to clear the screen.

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.

Thanks for the review. I have the same background as you with many years of Thinkpads, the last year and a half with an X61s. But there were just too many negatives to this 1st generation Air that I decided to wait. I got the X300 and I am very happy. It is a heck of a lot better than the X61s and it's not just the screen.

One thing about the battery, you say you were only getting 2 hours on your X61s with the small battery. I was getting over 4 hours for the first year and down to 3 hours after 18 months. Maybe you just had a bad battery?

It's not loss of features that is keeping me from the Air, but lack of quality in the 1st generation product, ie the problem you had with your first unit. I too don't care about optical drives, however I make heavy use out of USB peripherals so when the 2nd gen Air comes out and fixes that and all the other issues I may make the switch. For now I am quite happy with the X300 and would recommend it to any frequent traveler.

There are, or were two class laptop lines for serious users for the last many years, Thinkpads and Apple.

No way on the battery. I have several slims and several 8 cells. I do NOT turn the brighness down on my laptops. I get 2 hours on the slims on both the x60s and x61s.

Yes, I know that the x300 upgrade is a lot more than just the screen. I'm talking about all of the other differences between my Thinkpad and the Air -- the even higher build quality, the keyboard, and just the extreme thin size on the edges. I think the x300 will be very similar to the x61s in those aspect. One thing that the x300 did add was a built in webcam, but I doubt that it wil work in OS X w/ iChat. The only reason I kept tte x60s was because it worked so well with OS X, but the x61s didn't.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the x300 is a kick ... machine. Look at my Thinkpad past. I don't think much of the problem I had with the MBA. My first x61s has major stability problems out of the box and had to be returned. My current x61s is not nearly as stable as my x60s is. Sometimes you get a lemon laptop. The MBA just gets so much coverage and people are looking for ANY reason to bash it. It's ridiculous. Look on Facebook and see how many groups there are about how MBAs are stupid. Are there any for the x300? I don't see any problems with the MBA other than the 80gb, and like I said, it turned out not to be an issue. What USB issues do you have? What do you need to plug in there? The only thing I ever plug in is my USB gsm or evdo modem. I don't see that as a negative either. I had to add on a EVDO modem to my Thinkpads. There wasn't an internal option for Sprint, and adding your own miniPCI card does not work.

That's weird. You must have something else draining your batteries. Again I got 4 hours for the first year with my slim battery and I too kept the brightness high.

As for USB, I'm often charging and uploading/downloading/hacking to my iPhone as well as other GSM phones of family members. And I have a 250GB USB drive, and sharing files with USB keys, and occasionally using a USB DVD/CD player and various digital cameras. There are many times when I was using all 3 USB ports on my x61s and still now with the X300.

Of course the other great difference with both the X300 and the Air is the SSD. The performance for me has been significantly better.

Wait, there are two batteries smaller than the 8 cell. I'm talking about the ULTRA small one, the one with no bumps on the bottom and is totally flush. That's the one that lasts for ~2 hours. There's a slightly larger battery that doesn't stick out from the back, but has 2 bumps on the bottom. I've never used that one.

Here is another writer's comparison, for the X300 lovers:


It would be fun to see someone's comparison, for a few uses, with each running Leopard.

I have to admit, if the X300 was available for immediate purchase the day I had the impulse to buy yet another ultraportable, I would have bought it over the MBA. It might have been fate, but I'm glad I went with the MBA. So long Thinkpads!

After a quick visit to the Thinkpads forum, it looks like OS X still doesn't play well with the X61s, so I doubt it is going to behave with the X300.

It looks like I no longer have a need for my Thinkpad X60s running OS X. Ebay here I come!

I also bought an MBA.

So far for light use, it has been fine.

For additional space which I really haven't used, I picked up this WD 320Gb USB2.0 drive.

bus powered so not bad at all.

YMMV

Follow up:

In my previous mini review, I spoke about a problem I had with my original MBA. It appeared to overheat and have kernel problems all the time. Apple swapped it, and my new one appeared to be fine. It worked great until I reinstalled Parallels. My new book started to show the same behavior.

It turns out that you must use a special build of Parallels with the MBA. Once I upgraded to that, my problem went away.

So sorry Apple! It turns out the my first MBA was just fine.

Well it really isn't fine if software can cause the notebook to overheat! Apple should have some sort of kernel protection.

It does have the protection, and that is what I was seeing. The problem was with Parallels, not the MBA.