Apple Inc., a company which reached incredible heights in the field of Engineering and Technology, has always been trying to satisfy the insatiable demands and compete in the growing battle between the multinational companies to acquire a position in the minds and hearts of the people.

The advent of the year 2008 saw the birth of yet another Apple laptop, APPLE MACBOOK AIR NOTEBOOK. This 13″ slim and stylish model was introduced to the market with the hope of providing the customers with ultra thin and ultra portable laptop. Let’s reveal its classic features and see in detail about this latest production. So, it’s time for the readers to join with our analysis and jump into action. Will this model really overcome all the hurdles that its predecessors faced and scintillate? Read further to unravel the beautiful slim mystery.

TURN ONS:

  • Thinnest – Slim and stylish
  • iSight camera
  • Mic
  • LED Backlit display
  • Multi touch facility
  • Shining Aluminium Body

TURN-OFFS:

  • No Fire wire
  • No Ether net
  • No Media card reader
  • Only 1 USB Port
  • Absence of Optical Drive, SD Card Slot and Express card slot.

Knowing just the basic features will not suffice to study the product. Let us go through each of its features in detail.

Design:

In the present scenario, slimness plays a vital role in deciding the value of a laptop. They should be light weighted and easy to carry. As far as the thickness of this Macbook Air is concerned, it is 0.16 and 0.76 at its thinnest and thickest respectively. This feature is indeed astounding as no other model is as thin as 0.16, which, even the 11 inch Sony VAIO TZ150 and 12 inch Toshiba Portege R500 failed to achieve. But it is disappointing to know that this notebook is sturdier than it actually seems to be or rather, supposed to be. The average weight is around 3 pounds (1.36 kg) which is reasonable. The VAIO TZ150 is only 0.3 pound lighter than the Air and Portege R500 is 0.6 pound lighter than its counterpart, Macbook Air.

Apple MacBook Air Laptop Computer

Body:

The Apple MacBook Air is made up of aluminium which gives a shining and attractive look. But then, it gets heated up easily when used for a long time. Even simple activities like browsing and gaming make the notebook get hot and definitely become irritating. It is very hot at the place of palm rest that it goes to the extreme of burn feeling and the hotness becomes unbearable. The rounded curves add to its pleasing look. The screen is a 13.3″ glossy wide screen with TFT LED backlit display. The width is around 32.5 cm. All the older Macbooks were also made of aluminium and it is important to note here that the keyboard design and alignment of keys also do not vary much from the other models. The basic resolution 1200 x 800 pixels is good.

Full Featured Keyboard:

The keyboard is full sized and this actually means that number of keys is less. For instance, few keys like page up, page down, home, end, etc., are absent. But this can be compensated by pressing the function keys along with the arrow buttons. It is inbuilt with an ambient light sensor which has the capability to change the brightness according to the intensity of the light in its environment. This enables the user to work in dim conditions and also at places where light intensity might be a problem. Initially the intensity of light would be high and then after some time it adapts to the environment. The illumination of the keyboard is amazing. If the user wants to work on an airplane, where it might be really dark, the keyboard illuminates automatically, enabling the user to type or work easily and using the keyboard becomes simple.

The Amazing Multi-Touch:

Another feature of Apple MacBook Air Notebook is the Multi touch track pad which helps the users to perform certain works just by gestures. For instance, in this Air notebook, the user can rotate the 2 fingers to rotate the photos in iphoto and 3 fingers can be swiped vertically to switch between the different applications. The swiping of fingers can be used to enlarge the pictures. This exquisite model has a 90° bend which makes it all the more stylish and picture perfect, but unfortunately becomes a nuisance as it is difficult to close the notebook and put it in proper position.

Camera and Microphone:

The microphone and the web camera are positioned on top of the laptop. A green light located beside the camera glows when it is in use. The iSight camera thus makes chatting very easy and comfortable only one condition, the presence of wireless network. Macbook air is dependent on wireless network only. The processor is the Intel Core 2 Duo P7500 1.6GHz with L2 cache memory of 4MB and 800MHz front side bus and is placed on the left side of the Macbook. The speaker positioned right under the keyboard is relatively weak and the audio is not clear. This makes listening as well as speaking difficult.

Ports Available:

A single USB 2.0 port, Micro DVI Connector and a jack for analogue headphones are provided on the right side and are covered with a latch cover so that it is invisible from the outside. The DVI port supports output of types DVI, VGA, composite and S-video. This notebook is not advisable for the music freaks or for the voracious browsers as it has too many drawbacks in this field. The Macbook air 13″ Laptop Notebook has no role for full time gamers too. The users would eventually find themselves getting rather irritated using this model as there is only 1 single USB port. If this single USB is already preoccupied for some purpose, then there would obviously be no room for the user to connect to a drive or any entertainment media. This laptop is devoid of ethernet, fire wire, express card slot, media card slot and also SD card slot. Absence of ethernet means that wired internet connection is not possible, though it supports Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi 802.11 protocol, wireless networking, has a peak bandwidth of 248Mbit/s which is happy news to light browsers. But this might not be very useful because not all notebooks use wireless network. Transferring photos from digital camera to the notebook or manipulating with it is obviously impossible as it does not have fire wire. Therefore, transferring from camcorders to the notebook becomes impossible.

Absence of Optical Drive, Remote Disc:

Apple compensates the absence of optical drive by providing the facility to connect to a PC or MAC system with the only condition that they are on LAN. But we would like to bring to your notice that this compensation is not worthy enough, as it is not possible to watch movies from another system. But it would be fine for those who are interested only in sharing or borrowing files. The procedure of sharing or installing applications is quite simple. The user has to insert the Remote Disc setup software installation DVD in the nearby PC, install it there and then use the Remote disc option available under the finder option of the air notebook to access the contents of the optical drive in the Mac or PC. The advantage is that the files can be shared, installed or manipulated wirelessly. Bluetooth is another facility which this Macbook Air notebook offers.

Memory and Solid State Drive:

Another fiasco awaits the users on the basis of memory, that is, only 80GB. But yes, there is indeed a compensation for this too, the SSD. This 128GB Solid State Drive is truly efficient. But since there is no motion here, data accessing becomes a huge task. Its performance is sustained over an area. This is useful for simple applications like Microsoft software as the SSD can work with them at a comparatively good speed. This is an extra accessory and naturally it adds up to the budget of the user. The memory is soldered to the motherboard directly. Of course, the RAM is a standard 2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM. The notebook has a software iLife ’09 which includes iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb and GarageBand.

For creators and users interested in animation and graphics, this contour would not be the right choice as it is basically weak in 3D graphics. The hardware used for graphics takes up 144MB of shared memory and is Intel GMA X3100 graphics

Performance:

After the description of the features and specifications, we then jumped to the next main chapter, performance. The performance of this new baby was amazing when it was tried with Vista and poor when tested with OS Leopard 10.5. The software Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard includes applications like Time Machine, Quick Look, Spaces, Spotlight, Dashboard, Mail, iChat, Safari, Address Book, QuickTime, iCal, DVD Player, Photo Booth, Front Row, Xcode Developer Tools.

Battery:

Finally, talking about the battery, the Apple MacBook Air notebook comes with an Integrated 37-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery. This battery is non replaceable. It does not withstand the charge for more than 5 hours and it requires about 8 and half hours for charging. Even the promised 5 hours do not seem to work out for all users. The charge lasts for nearly 5 hours only for users who do only light browsing and restrict their utility time. However, once the charge goes down it becomes very difficult to recharge it as it takes a very long time. This adds to the nuisance of frequent and long distance travelers. Even the adapter of this model has a unique design.

Warranty:

The warranty is covered up to 1 year but can be extended to 3 years (right, on paying extra charge!!).

Verdict:

Every single laptop or notebook has indeed a unique role to play in this world dependent on technology and so does this latest series, APPLE MACBOOK AIR NOTEBOOK. The main attraction towards this model is its exquisitely slim contour which grabs attention at first sight. But it is not the look that matters, but the performance that it can give. Therefore, it is just an average performer. If it can be rated 5 stars for its thinness, then rating for its performance and facilities would only be 3 stars!! The memory is inadequate for a computer maniac but more than enough for a learner or a fresher. It is however not the right choice for cost effective laptops as the basic amount would not serve the purpose of replacing the personal computers. After the purchase of the laptop, the user needs to invest almost the same price again to get the extra facilities. So, if you are on the look out for a lovely notebook and ready to use it delicately then do not stop, march right ahead and purchase the AIR notebook.

Apple MacBook Air Laptop Computer – Technical Specification Details

Manufacturer Apple
Model Name MacBook Air
Laptop type Notebook
Dimensions (H x W x D) 12.8 x 8.9 x 0.76 inches
Colour White
Weight 3 pounds
Type of display LED-backlit glossy widescreen
Screen Size 13.3″
Resolution 1280 x 800 pixels
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo processor
Speed 1.86GHz or 2.13GHz
RAM 2GB of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM onboard
Hard drive size 250GB
Webcam Built-in iSight camera
Operating System Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard and Microsoft Vista
Warranty 1 year

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