Saturday, February 02, 2008

Macbook Air first thoughts



My Macbook Air arrived yesterday and I have been installing software ever since. I have installed Bootcamp and Windows XP (glad I ordered the external Super Drive since it made it easy!) and all of the programs I will need on the machine. I broke the drive directly in half, which gave me about 37GB for each platform. I knew I had to pick and choose wisely.

The Macbook Air is very slim. I was surprised at its weight...seems heavier than a little over 3 pounds, but the fact it is so compact might have something to do with with that. I made my own Vera Bradley slipcase for it out of two placemets today, which you can see below.


Pros:
Thin
Compact and sturdy
The multitouch touchpad is awesome!
Comes with DVI and VGA dongles that have their own connection under the little door
Screen is brighter than bright!
External Superdrive works great for a single-USB non-powered device on both platforms
Second Life regular client (Windows) works just fine (not as well as the Macbook Pro, but just fine)
Peppy on program start up

Cons:
A tad top-heavy when it is open wide since the screen area probably weighs as much as the keyboard area.
The mono speaker comes out from under the keyboard only on one side. A tad tinny, IMHO.

All software installed like a charm and the list follows.



Apple side of the machine
Cyberduck
Fire
Handbrake
Paparrazi
Microsoft Office 2004 for the Mac
iWork 08
Quicktime Pro
Flip4Mac
(18GB of HD left)

Windows side of the machine
Windows XP Pro
Office 2007 Pro Plus
Paint Shop Pro
Filezilla
Homesite
Second Life
Screen Print Platinum
Adobe Photoshop Elements 6
Adobe Premiere Elements 4
Acrobat 8 Pro
Microsoft Photostory
MacDrive 6
ActiveSync
Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008
Twhirl
Skype
Audacity
CA eTrust AV
Fraps
VLC
Stardock ObjectDock
(24GB of HD left)

I have not tried hooking up via the Ethernet dongle or to a LCD projector. I will do that later this weekend.

(Update 2/5/08: Good review here for the ones who really need to know how it performs!)