Antony wrote:Very good points Dr Lobster*.
It is really a bit disappointed for those who want to equip a bit more power on the road. For those who carry their laptops to their offices or schools, they might as well go for MacBook Pro or even MacBook.
One category I can think of is professional photographers. Last year when I was taking Aperture training course, a number of us were talking about the benefit of having an ultra-compact and lightweight laptop on the go. Many of us suggested iBook G4 12-inch or PowerBook G4 12-inch, although those were no longer being produced (then), but they can provide the important quick photo checking on the spot. (the 2.5-inch or 3-inch LCD screen is not enough.) Extremely powerful machine is not required.
Somehow I think the MacBook Air will suite those photographers well.
Currently I am more towards on the upcoming MacBook Pro (15-inch) as a replacement of my beloved PowerBook G4 (12-inch). I've been deciding whether to get a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro for quite a while.
i'm not sure that many photographers would actually go for this, especially given that price point - the 13.3" screen and comparatively (very) low 1280×800 resolution will mean that doing any sort of editing is a pain, especially with prosumer digital cameras pumping out 8megapixel photos - you'd probably only fit a quarter of the photo at 100% zoom on a panel at that resolution.
the more i read about it, the more it's apparent that nobody has actually thought about who might use such a laptop.
I do think the idea of having solid state storage in portables is more or less inevitable once they've got all the kinks worked out, but the benefits as of now are not actually that apparent. even in the benchmarks i've seen the overall speed of the solid state disk in the macbook air isn't that impressive. that will improve, but it doesn't seem to be worth the premium right now. it will also be interesting to see the real-world life span of such a disk.
again, i love the idea of the macbook air, but i don't think the technology isn't quite there yet, and too much functionality has been sacrificed at the cost of thinkness, which lets face it, hasn't really been a problem for the last 3 or 4 years anyway.
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