Has anyone got an Air yet

square_imp said:
Think I am off to an apple store tomorrow see if I can have a play on one. The super-thin vibe does tempt me but just can't see myself being able to live with no ethernet port, 1 usb and no optical drive.
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You'd be surprised. The wifi is nippy, and the lack of optical drive doesn't bother me. I mean..... when do you ever need to use an optical? The only time I would (on a laptop) would be to watch a film. But, can always rip it, or copy it onto the mac. I guess.
 
I ordered the 1.8ghz with all the trimmings for my boss yesterday..

Delivery 2 - 3 weeks Looking forward to having a play with it when it arrives!
 
had a play with one today - when it came out i was dead against it, however if you think about what a laptop/notebook should be; light, portable, able to do some tasks but certainly not all - the Air has it completely right.

If i had £1200 to spend on a laptop, i would only be looking at one product. The air would be the perfect compliment to a mac pro - do your high end work on the pro and use the Air when you're out and about. It does make it a very expensive internet surfing machine, as that and MS office is about all you're going to ask it to do - however if i was going into a meeting with a potential client, pulling that out of your bag to give a presentation is going to send out all the right signals - and i'd say for the £1000 investment, you'd quickly get it back with new clients impressed with the professional in front of them!

However, i don't have £1200 to spend on a laptop - I've just bought a Mac Pro :D. Personally i'd be looking more at the macbook as a next laptop for me (my iBook G4 is still going strong though!! I love my little iBook!) as it's a better price range and with 4GB of RAM it's bloody quick, my dad has one with 4GB and it just slices through video editing on Final Cut.

But i have been impressed with the Air when i first tried it today. I'd say for £1200 there is nothing better, but it's a lot to spend on any laptop imo, You could almost buy the base spec Mac pro for that! Or the other option would to be a very nice second hand MBPro for about £1200 that will just knock the Air out of the park performace wise, but that isn't what the Air is about is it?
 
I agree with Bouncer. As a complement to a Mac Pro it's a no brainer but as a stand alone it doesn't quite cut it. I've gone for the best of both worlds (due to budget) and got a Macbook Pro.

Panzer
 
Well I've had an in depth look (with the real possibility of buying one) and my thoughts are:

Bearing in mind I'm a big user of ultra portables and didn't write the mba off when it was announced like a lot of people. I think the price is fine and have no issue there, it's what machines like this cost.

But I won't be buying one and I think it could be an awful lot better.

First, it's not an ultra-portable, I should have spotted this sooner really but the thinness doesn't make it an ultra-portable, it's simply too big a footprint. It's the same size as a macbook or sony SZ but thinner. Yes it is very thin and pretty light but it's too big to be a real ultraportable.

The ports are just too limited for me, it needs firewire on an express-card or something. The lack of expandability is too much, I didn't mind the no optical drive concept, my current machine doesn't have one but it does have 3 USB, firewire, network, modem and a pc card slot. It weighs the same as a mba and is slightly smaller in footprint (it also cost less and is 18 months old).

I found the multi touch trackpad a little hard to use, mostly because it's so damn big, it's difficult just to use it normally because the mouse button is so low down on the chassis below the enormous touchpad. The gestures are nice but I'm not sure how useful really, I won't object if they make their way into my next macbook pro though.

Battery life is disappointing, particularly since you can't carry a spare. It's beaten by almost everything on the market today and this is something an ultraportable needs to be good at. This alone would have been enough to stop me buying if everything else was better.

In the end my next ultraportable won't be a mac unfortunately (and I really wanted it to be as well). The form factor is just too big, 12" widescreen would have been far better for me. I hate to say it but having used both a fair bit I think the sony TZ is a better laptop by a big margin, for me I'll probably choose between that and a toshiba R500 (lighter and more ports than the macbook air).

So thats my opinion!
 
I'd love to have one, but the one USB port is a deal breaker. I use one USB port on my mbp for my tmobile 3g modem and another one for my camera/USB card reader or my hdd with my aperture/iphoto library on it. With just one USB port I can't upload any photos with out copying them to the local hdd first.
 
wush said:
The £250 ASUS eeePC is a vastly more exciting product! :)
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Well, depends what you want. It's not powerful enough to be a real laptop is the problem for me, it's fine for a web browser on the train (and for £200 is a far better bet than any of the alternatives). But it's more a PDA on steroids than a laptop.

For the money it's an exciting product for sure, and hopefully it'll make an impact. In terms of size only the sony tz series rivals it (but of course they cost £1400+). I wouldn't buy one myself but there's a lot of people who it should suit.
 
Hmm - the CPU is comparatively slow, but it's unfair to call it a PDA on steroids. It is a proper laptop, albeit with a screen resolution likely too low to be comfortable as someone's only system. You can disable the babyish default interface, put on a different linux distribution or even XP on to it easily :)

I do agree about the MB Air though. Buh.. it's thin. So what? As elegant as it is, it's not really breaking any new ground and is quite boring.
 
wush said:
Hmm - the CPU is comparatively slow, but it's unfair to call it a PDA on steroids. It is a proper laptop, albeit with a screen resolution likely too low to be comfortable as someone's only system. You can disable the babyish default interface, put on a different linux distribution or even XP on to it easily :)

I do agree about the MB Air though. Buh.. it's thin. So what? As elegant as it is, it's not really breaking any new ground and is quite boring.
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Maybe, for me, it's only useful as a web browser, email client etc (essentially all the stuff I can do on my ipod these days). Screen is too small and processor too slow for even the lightest photoshop usage or anything like that. I know for a lot of people it's going to be great but for me it can't be compared a real laptop.
 
I have ordered one cant wait til it arrives, i think there amazing, i bought a mini mac just before christmas and have it hooked up to my 46" Sony LCD in the living room and it looks mazing.

I saw the MBA for the first time in the apple store on regent street in London and was going to get one there but they said they couldnt keep them in stock, as soon as a delivery came in they were sold straight away. So i have pre-ordered one when i got back from London and im just waiting on the phone call now lol
 
I cant believe anyone would buy one tbh, £800 (or whatever it is) for 200 mhz more on the cpu and 16gb less hd space?? I mean, comon, you can buy a macbook for that :|

I fail to see who this is actually aimed at.. its hardly economical for a company to choose this as a laptop for their employees..? Something in the finanacial times (havent read it yet) about it being aimed at students with very rich parents. Meh, ill stick with my macbook :)
 
Spitfir3 said:
I cant believe anyone would buy one tbh, £800 (or whatever it is) for 200 mhz more on the cpu and 16gb less hd space?? I mean, comon, you can buy a macbook for that :|

I fail to see who this is actually aimed at.. its hardly economical for a company to choose this as a laptop for their employees..? Something in the finanacial times (havent read it yet) about it being aimed at students with very rich parents. Meh, ill stick with my macbook :)
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OK, read the thread properly and take in the reason. It's aimed at the all the pro news photographers who still use a 12" powerbook because apple never replaced it properly.

It's aimed at all people who use ultraportable laptops like the sony tz series every day.

That includes me, though I won't be buying one because apple screwed up the form factor and won't let me replace the battery.
 
Spitfir3 said:
I cant believe anyone would buy one tbh, £800 (or whatever it is) for 200 mhz more on the cpu and 16gb less hd space?? I mean, comon, you can buy a macbook for that :|

I fail to see who this is actually aimed at.. its hardly economical for a company to choose this as a laptop for their employees..? Something in the finanacial times (havent read it yet) about it being aimed at students with very rich parents. Meh, ill stick with my macbook :)
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I've got the SSD, it is quicker, it is faster and the battery lasts longer than the other one.
 
Spitfir3 said:
I cant believe anyone would buy one tbh, £800 (or whatever it is) for 200 mhz more on the cpu and 16gb less hd space?? I mean, comon, you can buy a macbook for that :|

I fail to see who this is actually aimed at.. its hardly economical for a company to choose this as a laptop for their employees..? Something in the finanacial times (havent read it yet) about it being aimed at students with very rich parents. Meh, ill stick with my macbook :)
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I would say at the blackberry toting MD, where the portability is the ultimate requirement. It allows them access to a full notebook, and the limits like the Optical Drive, lack of built in ethernet don't count against it as they don't need them. Also the bragging right compared to the other MD's with there normal Wintel laptops.

The market at that level does work like that, one of our customers is going to get a Blackberry for there MD purely because there golfing buddies have them and they feel left out, no business justification, just I want one so go get it.
 
mdjmcnally said:
I would say at the blackberry toting MD, where the portability is the ultimate requirement. It allows them access to a full notebook, and the limits like the Optical Drive, lack of built in ethernet don't count against it as they don't need them. Also the bragging right compared to the other MD's with there normal Wintel laptops.

The market at that level does work like that, one of our customers is going to get a Blackberry for there MD purely because there golfing buddies have them and they feel left out, no business justification, just I want one so go get it.
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Well a few might buy one but it's pretty obvious with 10 seconds thought that it isn't the target market. Senior management is a handful of people per company, any big companies will have IT policy regarding which makes they buy from (and unless their media companies that's not likely to include apple).

It's a tiny market being the point, which would make it a silly target market. As I've said several times, the target is the people who had 12" powerbooks and want a new one and the people who use windows ultraportables.

In my opinion they missed but thats the target and I'm sure there will be plenty of takers who don't care about the flaws.
 
bigredshark said:
Well a few might buy one but it's pretty obvious with 10 seconds thought that it isn't the target market. Senior management is a handful of people per company, any big companies will have IT policy regarding which makes they buy from (and unless their media companies that's not likely to include apple).
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Not a few, loads. They're selling plenty of Airs, mostly (by that I mean a noticeable majority) to quite well-off business types.
 
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