Apple Apple MacBook Air

65

Fair

Avg User Rating
7 User Reviews | add yours »

Pros
Sleek, sexy, spartan design
Fantastic keyboard
Cons
So slim, there's little room for inputs
Poor battery life

$949.00
From 1 Merchant

Performance: Poor: 46
Features: Fair: 68
Design: Good: 78

Find out how these scores, and their relative weights, combine to produce the PC World Rating.

Performance
Adobe Photoshop CS2	802
Autodesk 3ds max 8.0 SP-3 DirectX	886
Autodesk 3ds max 8.0 SP-3 Rendering	1346
Battery Life (Video Playback in hh:mm)	2:31:26 AM
Doom 3, 1024 by 768, 32-Bit	7
Far Cry, 1024 by 768, 32-Bit	17.73
Firefox 2	468
Microsoft Office 2003 with SP-1	465
Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9.0	407
Multitasking	613
Nero 7 Ultra Edition	927
Number of Included Batteries	1
Roxio VideoWave Movie Creator 1.5	339
Winzip Computing WinZip 10.0	427
WorldBench 6 Score	57
WorldBench 6 Word Score	Poor

What You Should Know about the Apple MacBook Air

Multitask and Not Bog Down

The more memory a PC has, the faster your programs run and the more windows you can work in simultaneously. Equipped with memory between 1GB and 3GB, this laptop should be able to handle just about any task you can throw at it without bogging down too much. For instance, if you're a multitasker and you'd like to burn a music CD in one window while watching your favorite DVD movie (for the umpteenth time) in another--while flipping between your inbox and your browser to work on your blog during the movie's boring parts--this laptop can manage it all without a hiccup.

Reviewed by: mcconnell

Duration of ownership: 2 Months

Strengths: Other than being very, very thin and fairly reliable, I haven't found any strengths. I will say that it is extremely portable.

Weaknesses: The processor is weak (even upgraded) and the HDD is small. I have felt very limited while working and playing games. I am a huge gamer and I also edit photos/videos a lot. This laptop, although small, doesn't have a lot of room to work. Also the lack of a CD/DVD drive, monitor port, small screen, lack of fire wire port, Ethernet port and only 2 USB drives make it extremely limiting.

Overall Evaluation: I would have to say that I don't think Apple did very well with this laptop. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who is looking for power for work or play. It is very thin, almost too thin, but that doesn't make up for everything it is missing. For now I will go back to my Dell laptop (17 inch screen, 250 GB HDD, 2.4 Duo Core CPU, and 2 GB RAM).
Reviewed by: MBA4EVA

Duration of ownership: 3 Days

Strengths: The perfect ultraportable laptop for the majority of users. OS X and Vista capable. Solid performance.

Weaknesses: Relatively slow HDD only an issue for heavy duty read-write duties - upgrade is a possibility down the road though.

Overall Evaluation: I had been unsure as to which of the three Macbook ranges to buy. If you want graphics performance get the Macbook Pro. If you want price vs performance get the Macbook. If you want a slick ultraportable with more-than-adequate performance for the majority of users, get the Macbook Air. I recommend it without hesitation. This is especially so if you get the external ODD, which works a treat when needed, and if you get the latest Airport Extreme and whack a big external HDD on it. The disk space issues become irrelevant as you can connect iTunes and iPhoto to your preexisting libraries without difficulty. You can also stream and media without any dramas whatsoever. Another winner from Apple.