As a school principal and teacher, my computer is my constant companion. From answering emails in my office to showing Keynote slideshows in the classroom, I am using my computer almost constantly throughout the day. Until about three weeks ago, I had a white Macbook. While this computer got the job done, it was starting to get a little long in the tooth. The lack of RAM and aging processor caused some slowdowns and had me longing for a new computer.
Until the rumors started circulating about the newest Macbook Airs, I would have never considered getting an Air. I was always in awe of how slim the Air was, but there was no way I could justify the purchase of a machine that was a lot more expensive than my current computer and may have actually been a slight performance downgrade. To me the Air was for people who had tons of extra money and wanted a shiny toy to show off that was more looks than performance.
As an avid reader of technology blogs, I had read the rumors that the newest Macbook Airs, with their upgraded processors, were lightning fast and even outperformed some of last year’s Macbook pros in a few benchmark tests. Suddenly, owning a Macbook Air started to make more sense to me. As someone who is constantly carrying his laptop between the office, classroom, and meetings, the portability was attractive to me. That, combined with the fact that it sounded like the new Macbook Air would also be a major performance upgrade over my current Macbook, suddenly made the purchase easier to justify in my mind. The Air sounded like it might be the perfect mix of portability and performance for my day to day work. I ended up ordering the 13″ Macbook Air on the day it was released. I purchased the stock 13″ model that came with a 1.7Ghz i5 processor, 4GB of Ram, and 128GB of flash storage.
After owning the Air for three weeks now, this is my review and overall thoughts on the computer.
Portability and Design
The portability of the 13″ Macbook Air is a huge upgrade over my last Macbook. The Air is so slim that I can actually slide it in the side pocket of my messenger bag that I carry with me each day to work. This would have never been possible with my white Macbook. This leaves the main compartment of my bag for all the books I need to carry around with me throughout the day. The light weight of the Air almost has me forgetting that I am carrying it with me at times. For someone who needs to move their computer from place to place, the slimness and portability of the machine is unmatched.
The Air’s design is definitely an attention grabber. I can’t even count the number of times that I have heard comments such as, “Wow, that is a thin computer!,” after sliding it out of my bag. While beautiful, the design is also very functional. The backlit, full-sized keyboard is a joy to use. The keys have a satisfying click to them when pressed. The large trackpad is very accurate and almost flawlessly picks up all the gestures used by OSX Lion. The computer is almost silent when being used for lighter computing purposes such as surfing the web, email, or word processing. The fan does make a fair amount of noise, however, if you boot up more intensive programs such as movie editing software or games. The fan does do a good job of keeping the computer comfortably cool even when the computer is being heavily taxed.
The screen is beautiful. Unless your face is pressed up against the screen, it is difficult to see the individual pixels. The Air has a built in sensor that automatically adjusts the brightness of the screen based on lighting conditions. Even in direct sunlight the screen is still very usable, though the computer will switch to full brightness and reduce your battery life significantly. Reflections are not much of an issue on the Air and the screen still looks very clear even when viewed from extreme angles.
I was concerned about scuffing or scratching the computer with how often I slide it in and out of my bag. I was also concerned about having it in a bag with a lot of heavy books. Thankfully, I found a very inexpensive and effective solution. I purchased a Belkin Macbook Air sleeve for less than ten dollars on Amazon.com. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0014I4FPS) The sleeve cushions and protects the Macbook Air without adding much bulk. The Air slides easily into and out of this padded sleeve and I now worry less about shoving it in and out of my bag. I would recommend this sleeve or a similar sleeve to any Air owner.
Performance
The portability was perfect for my needs, but what about the performance? I am happy to say that this machine really flies. The machine boots up very quickly and wakes from sleep almost instantly. On my old white Macbook, I had gotten used to the fact that my icons would bounce a few times before any program I clicked on in my dock would load. Most programs now load on my Air immediately. While waiting a few seconds longer for programs to load may not seem like a big deal, it is a huge benefit for me when I only have a couple of minutes to respond to an email between meetings or classes or to load a picture, Keynote presentation, or website during a class period.
The Air is able to handle multiple programs running at once with ease. I often have my email open while I work on a making a Keynote presentation, while typing a Pages document, while surfing the web on multiple tabs, while running my Twitter feed, while listening to music in iTunes, while downloading a file, while…..you get the idea. I am a heavy multi-tasker on the computer. I was able to do all of this without any slowdowns or rotating colorful beach balls. When performing a similar load of tasks, the spinning, colorful beach ball and I had become good friends while on my former Macbook. I was happy to say goodbye to the loading times and slowdowns.
While I am no longer a heavy gamer, I do still enjoy playing the occasional game in my free time. I wasn’t sure how well the Air would perform for gaming purposes, but I was pleasantly surprised in this area as well. I am a huge Civilization fan, so I purchased Civilization V via the Mac App store the first day I got my Air. I had no idea what to expect, but was surprised to find that the game loaded up extremely quickly. When loading a new game, I didn’t have to sit on the load screen for anywhere near as long as I did on my old computer. The flash storage certainly makes a big difference. Though I was not able to run the game with high graphics settings, the game ran very smoothly on medium to low settings. Even in the later rounds of the game, when some computers are reduced to choppy slideshows with all the units on the screen, the Air chugged along quite well. I kept waiting for the game performance to dip below what was enjoyable for me, but I made it through an entire game without many instances of choppiness. You won’t want to purchase the Macbook Air specifically for gaming reasons, but you can certainly enjoy some of the latest games on lower graphical settings. It is impressive to see games running as well as they do on such a thin machine.
The battery life has been fairly good so far. It does depend heavily on what type of computing tasks you are doing. I have easily been able to get the advertised 7 hours of battery life when word processing, light web browsing, or checking emails. However, when doing heavy multi-tasking as I often do, the battery life suffers a bit. On most days I am able to make it through my work day without charging, but I still am forced to carry around the cord for the occasional days where I need to use my computer for doing more intensive tasks. If there was one area of the Macbook Air that I wish was better this would be it. It is a bit of a bummer to have to carry around a cord that weighs almost as much as this thin and light computer. I think this is a necessary tradeoff for the extremely thin design. I am glad I went with the 13″ model for the two extra advertised hours of battery life over the 11″ model.
Limited Storage
The one concern I had with purchasing the Macbook Air was the lack of hard drive space. Going from a computer that had 250GB of storage to one with 128GB concerned me quite a bit. I do have a fairly large collection of Keynote presentations, music, videos, and photos both from work and home. I was concerned that the Air would not be able to function as my main computer with the limited storage that it has. The solution to this problem for me was the purchase of an external hard drive. I was able to get a 500GB USB external hard drive for $60. I keep all my large files that I do not use on a daily basis on the hard drive. It is easy to toss the hard drive in my bag with the Air so that I am never without my files when I need them. Though it is a little tedious to have to plug in the drive when I need to access some of my larger files and this solution takes up one of the only two USB connections available on the Air, this external drive has allowed me to use the Macbook Air as my main computer. An external drive is a good investment for anyone thinking about the Air.
Conclusion
I am extremely happy with my Macbook Air purchase. Every time I see another laptop I am surprised at how large they seem compared to the size of laptop I am now used to after owning my Air for three weeks. After experiencing the snappy speed of the Air, I don’t know that I could ever go back to a computer without an SSD hard drive. It has been a joy using the 13″ Macbook Air as my main computer each day at my work. If you are looking for a computer that is both portable and powerful enough to be your main computer, look no further than the Macbook Air.
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