Which size MacBook Air would you prefer?
Where’s the “one of each” button?
Well if I had to buy one, and frankly they do intrigue me, I’d go with 13". Cause 13 is bigger than 11, no?
— Alan
Well that and with the 13 you get 2 more hours of battery life from the thing.
Going to try them out at the Apple Store this weekend. Probably 13" we’ll see.
13" physical dimensions don’t seem that much bigger than the 11".
Except for the part where they run MACOSX and are too expensive, the MBAs – particularly the 11" – are nearly ideal computers. If you take the 11" one and depower the hardware a good chunk (to make it cheaper and make the battery last longer) and put ChromeOS instead of MACOSX on it, there is my dream laptop.
My only thing is that I can get a 13 inch MBP for almost the same price as the air and the MBP has 3 hours on the battery life. Yeah the air is lighter and the whole instant on thing but I dunno. I am going to keep an eye on the reviews before I decide which I am going to get.
It is unlikely in the extreme that ChromeOS’s power management doesn’t suck. Which means you won’t get enough battery life no matter what hardware you’re using.
11" for me I think. They modified the battery life calculations making it not directly-comparable so I expect it’ll be competitive with the MBPs, and I dig the lack of extra space around the keyboard. They haven’t had a setup like that since the old 12" PowerBook back in the day. It’s also wider-profile (16:9 vs 16:10) making it even more travel-friendly.
I’ll have to see them at the brick and mortar to be able to tell.
My only real gripe about the 13" MBP is that it gets quite hot with that alum body after heavy use, hot enough that it becomes discomforting to hold. It’s possible this lower power version avoids this. It’s also possible these ULV procs might be useless for anything but word processing; megahertz numbers are nearing irrelevance now.
I do like the theory that it can stay on in standby in perpetuity; otoh, it’s possible this does not refer to an iPad like instant-on but instead waking from hibernation, which you can already do with the Macbooks with a bit of tweaking.
Yeah I think I would be sold on the Air if the hibernation worked like the iPad. But again though if the same thing can be done with the MBP then it becomes a bit of a toss up.
Instant on and sleep for days is one of the things I love about the iPad and I would love a portable Pc that could do that.
I’m interested in the 11" as a sort of expensive Netbook, that can do a lot more.
I would prefer the 11" for form factor, but would want the 256Gb storage option on the 13".
The 11" is sexy, but I’d want more storage, and it has no SD reader.
And the battery life is less than my AMD-based netbook.
I’d probably go the Eye-Fi route (wireless SD card). That sounds more convenient anyway, and I’ve been meaning to get one.
These laptops just seem ridiculously overpriced for what you’re getting.
I could see the claim on the old MBA’s - they were definitely overpriced - but $1000 overpriced? Really?
Sony’s Vaio SZ or whatever their overpriced ultraslim line is these days must be sweating bullets.
For what you’re getting? Ya… It think so.
Maybe part of this is just that it’s in a really weird middle-zone for laptops. It’s powerful (but extremely expensive) compared to netbooks… But then if you compare it to laptops, it’s weak (while also being extremely expensive) with the main benefit being that it’s light.
If you’re in the netbook market, then you can get one for less than half the price of the cheapest one of these. If you’re in the laptop market, then you’d have to be willing to sacrifice major technical specs in favor of it being very light. But if weight is really the major issue, then why aren’t you just getting a netbook?
I’m speaking from my own perspective here though, where I use my laptop for pretty hard core stuff… but I also travel with it constantly, and the weight has never been a problem. But maybe there’s some particular market that’s looking for this kind of thing.