Three weeks with the MacBook Air

by Volker Weber

ZZ53D66FA2

It's now been three weeks since I started using the MacBook Air, and it feels like "forever". Unfortunately I have to give it back two weeks from now.

The MBA is the perfect notebook for me. Light, silent, fast, and rock solid. There may be notebooks with faster CPUs, more memory, or more storage. I don't care about any of that. My "old" MacBook Pro feels quaint compared to this machine.

I have not used a lot of software. These days I hardly need anything more than Microsoft Word, iPhoto and Chrome. Add Dropbox, Twitter, Evernote to the mix. They are all performing very well. If I did not already own a MacBook and an iPad, this would be the machine to get.

Comments

How is Flash or anything else CPU intensive working for you? That was the main reason I got rid of my 1st gen MBA. It was always working the fans and that was not at all silent.

As I don't wear my hair long nor like marketing I just didn't have any use for so much hot air.

Mariano Kamp, 2011-02-06

I only had this issue on the first day, when I was still sorting out software on the machine. Ever since it has been quiet.

Volker Weber, 2011-02-07

Interessant: Jeder berichtet über den Air-Effekt, auch beim 13er. Dabei hätte ich gedacht, dass der gefühlte Unterschied zum 13" MBP nicht allzu groß sein kann - 700 g mehr, gleiche Größe.

Gleichzeitig berichten viele 11" MBA-User, dass dieses Gerät im Alltagseinsatz zu klein sei, zu wenig Festplattenplatz, zu schwacher Prozessor, zu wenig Akkulaufzeit.

Richard Wenzel, 2011-02-07

That might have been the initial indexing of spotlight.

Sorry for being so insistent, but are you using Flash on that machine?

mariano kamp , 2011-02-07

Well, I don't know. I use whatever Flash Chrome uses to render a web page.

Volker Weber, 2011-02-07

The compromise I did works extremely well for me: I've replaced the hard drive with an SSD. This does not make my 2008 MacBook Pro significantly lighter (and thanks to Spotlight and Firefox the fan is still pretty busy), but the increased speed is well worth the money.

Stefan Heinz, 2011-02-07

Old vowe.net archive pages

I explain difficult concepts in simple ways. For free, and for money. Clue procurement and bullshit detection.

vowe

Paypal vowe