The Air Has Landed

The good, the bad and the ugly. Well, there's absolutely nothing ugly about the macbook air. It's absolutely gorgeous. Thin thin thin. It is much sturdier and lighter than I expected. It feels weightless. HUGE plusses for design and portability. The keyboard feels great. The screen looks fantastic. You can see some comparisons with my 15" macbook pro. It's definitely smaller by a long shot. I love the lighted keyboard. It seems to function even better than my MBP. 

As for performance, it's not the quickest horse out of the gate but it certainly wasn't as pokey as I expected based on the reviews out there. For most major tasks - keynote, pages, word, web browsing - it performs just fine. It even compared with my 2.0 GHz MBP in iphoto - granted with far fewer photos in the library. I don't need anything more intensive really, so this is good.

Did I mention it was thin? I can hardly tell it's in my bag when I carry it around. That's exactly what I need for traveling. For this reason it is fantastic for me.

One thing I noticed was that the charger works either way it is plugged in. I know some people have complained that the cord bends too much when plugged in if the plug is behind you. No worries. You can just attach the connector the other way around and no more 180 cord bending. The one negative thing that I would say is a real fault is the slow slow battery charging. I just noticed that it is only 35% charged after an hour plugged in when it was down to 15%. Apple, without a replaceable battery, you need to do better than this! Hopefully this can be resolved with a software update soon.

Overall I give this one Three Thumbs Up!

Something in the air

And it will be in my hands some time today! Just in time for me to take it on the plane tomorrow. Yes, the new Macbook Air is a perfect travel partner. I'll give you my review of it soon.

Busy as a bee

That is me and why I have not posted lately. I still plan to. Don't give up on me. I'm still finding a few minutes here and there to read an article or two. If only the days were 72 hours long. *sigh*

Anyway, there's lots of buzz about Apple's new Macbook Air. Lots of negative comments going around on the mac forums. I don't understand this. Sure, this computer is not for everyone. Sure, this computer could not replace a primary computer. But let's be honest. This is a computer for travelers. This computer is ideal for me. I can't wait to get my hands on one. In the last five years I can't think of a single time I have used my optical drive while on a trip. Rarely have I ever had to use an ethernet cable while on the road and in the last two years I have never needed an ethernet cable. Who's going to travel with bulky firewire peripherals in their carry on bag? All these arguments against the macbook air are ludicrous. Obviously made by people who don't go on frequent short trips. So I ordered one as soon as they were announced.

 I know this is a chemistry blog. So let's talk about chemistry. This is the first laptop with a mercury free LCD display. And the glass contains no arsenic.