I got my Macbook Air last Friday and now I have had some time to migrate and use it in my everyday work, so let's cut to the chase: This was the laptop I was waiting for! This might not be the laptop you are waiting for, but for me it's perfect. It's thin (you've got to see and feel it for yourself before you understand), light and don't have a lot of unnecessary ports and things I don't use (like DVD and firewire).
I switched from a 1:th gen Blackbook to this new gadget, and performance wise I don't feel a big difference, a full compile of the xmms2 tree with c++ bindings takes around 2 minutes when using both cores, this is not very long time. I haven't noticed the slow harddrive (no I didn't go for the SSD version) that much yet, only when Mail.app decides to write a lot of changes to disk (try to remove a whole folder sometime). When compiling Qt it got a bit hot at the left corner and the fan's where running but otherwise it has been very quiet and cool.
The lack of a Etherenet port is just a small inconvience, I use the Ethernet port at two different customers, that's all. Rest of the time I am wireless with wlan or 3g via my phone (why do people cry about no-built in 3g, the phone via bluetooth works just fine!).
Keyboard, screen and trackpad are fantastic, feels like working with a big laptop and you never feel confined to something that doesn't really fit you. I had the chance to try it on the Airplane the other day, while it still have a big footprint (because of the 13.3" screen) it's really a lot easier to handle, it fits into the pocket infront of you and it doesn't feel clumpsy to have in your knee (like the blackbook did).
I think Apple had me in mind when creating this laptop. A thin, light OSX laptop that is designed to bring everywhere.
Oh, and I will use it as my only computer (of course storing and stuff like that takes place on my mac mini at home), I don't have the need for something with more power or storage, I just need to bring it all the time.
Update: Something I don't like is that the battery is not user replaceable, it's a shame. But I guess the laptop wouldn't have been this sweet with it. I hope the figure something out for later revs of it though.
Showing posts with label macbook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label macbook. Show all posts
2008/02/19
2006/10/31
Post-honeymoon review of the black MacBook
By popular demand I will write the follow-up on my old post.
To make a long story short: 5 months later I am still in love.
I compile xmms2 and c++ code so much faster, make -j 2 really makes your day on a dual-core system. The overall speed is still great, but I have also understood by talking to other macbook owners that you should put in as much memory as possible. Using less then 1Gb in two sticks seems to be a waste of CPU. This might not be true for other OSes then MacOSX, but I don't know since I never installed anything else.
The glossy screen doesn't really create any visible problems. The widescreen is of course great for movies and I don't really have anything negative to say about the screen in whole.
Some of the things that I have had a problem with, the airport in particular has been corrected with macosx updates. The current version 10.4.8 seems to have fixed all things I have been irritated at. The heat was a issue until recently when they released another update to the firmware and it has gotten a lot better.
The battery-time is about 4 hours which is very ok for a powerful laptop with a big screen like this.
The only negative thing I have noted is a quirky sound when I move the screen, it seems to be related to that the whole thing is in plastic :-) But I don't really mind.
Haven't noted any discoloration or any high-frequent sounds. I take it that the black model doesn't have the same problems as the white one with discoloration, and the sounds might just be me that is deaf, but I can't hear anything that is annoying.
All in all, the macbook is a very fast and nice laptop. It's a tad to big for laptop-on-airplane but otherwise I happily trade the extra size for the nice screen. I have also been blessed and have not encountered any of the "normal" problem for this line. I recommend anyone that want a mac computer to go for the macbook. The only reason I see you would like a pro over a macbook is that you want the better graphics card for games, for everyday use it works just fine.
To make a long story short: 5 months later I am still in love.
I compile xmms2 and c++ code so much faster, make -j 2 really makes your day on a dual-core system. The overall speed is still great, but I have also understood by talking to other macbook owners that you should put in as much memory as possible. Using less then 1Gb in two sticks seems to be a waste of CPU. This might not be true for other OSes then MacOSX, but I don't know since I never installed anything else.
The glossy screen doesn't really create any visible problems. The widescreen is of course great for movies and I don't really have anything negative to say about the screen in whole.
Some of the things that I have had a problem with, the airport in particular has been corrected with macosx updates. The current version 10.4.8 seems to have fixed all things I have been irritated at. The heat was a issue until recently when they released another update to the firmware and it has gotten a lot better.
The battery-time is about 4 hours which is very ok for a powerful laptop with a big screen like this.
The only negative thing I have noted is a quirky sound when I move the screen, it seems to be related to that the whole thing is in plastic :-) But I don't really mind.
Haven't noted any discoloration or any high-frequent sounds. I take it that the black model doesn't have the same problems as the white one with discoloration, and the sounds might just be me that is deaf, but I can't hear anything that is annoying.
All in all, the macbook is a very fast and nice laptop. It's a tad to big for laptop-on-airplane but otherwise I happily trade the extra size for the nice screen. I have also been blessed and have not encountered any of the "normal" problem for this line. I recommend anyone that want a mac computer to go for the macbook. The only reason I see you would like a pro over a macbook is that you want the better graphics card for games, for everyday use it works just fine.
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