For a while now, I've made it pretty clear that I am one of the few hold outs of the Mac faithful that has been waiting for a return of a high end ultra-portable notebook. So imagine my glee when I found out about the MacBook Air. However, once the initial excitement about the announcement faded and I looked at the specs, I'm a bit hesitant.
So what stopped me from pre-ordering like a good little Mac-olite? Well though I do appreciate the design of this notebook it looks like it might have a few issues that would pretty much prevent me from buying the notebook all together. So in no particular order here are my concerns.
The processor seems to be pretty under powered 1.8GHz isn't exactly what I was hoping for when Apple announced its new ultra-portable. Mostly I'm worried about the overall OS X experience, can it still hold up with a 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo under the hood.
The overall design of the laptop leaves much to be desired in upgrades. Now until I get my hands on one and read some reviews, I'll be able to figure if I'll be able to upgrade the hard drive without a complete dissection of the system. There is also the question if the RAM is replaceable/upgradeable.
The new spaced keyboard, now this is strictly a preference thing but I don't like the newer Mac keyboard layout that puts gaps in between its keys. I'm just more comfortable typing on a keyboard design of the MacBook Pro's and wish Apple would have taken the layout of that family line.
No built-in Ethernet, now this is close to a deal breaker for me. I know pretty much everyone like wireless and shouldn't need to go to a network cable, but some times the RJ45 interface is a necessity. Now I know there is a USB dongle that can be used which will work in the few cases when I need one. So his goes from a deal breaker to a minor annoyance.
Sticking with the subject of ethernet connections the dongle is a simply a 10/100 Mbps interface. Haven't we transitioned to Gigabit yet? This has more to do with me thinking of this as a high end ultra portable (unfortunately it is not).
Much larger track pad, I'm not so worried about the new track pad multi-touch functionality. I'm worried that the larger track pad may start interfering with my ability to type effectively which I find much more important than pinch functionality.
With the this new family of notebooks be reliable from the get go. Let's not forget the iBook, MacBook, and MacBook Pro's had a few serious reliability issues that now make me a bit weary of any new notebook family line.
Even with all of my above issues I'm still considering a MacBook Air as my next notebook purchase but it's because of those issues that I won't be pre-ordering. Most of my concerns will either become real life deal breakers for me or become non-issues that I'm just over reacting to little nit picky issues. The other issues such as price and battery are actually an issue I'm less concerned with.
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