Reversion to Analog – Part 1: Macbook Air Review

(This post and many that follow it are/will be typed from a written form.)

I am writing (yes, Writing) this blog post on a tablet; no, not an iPad; not a Samsung Galaxy Tab; I’m talking about a composition book. Like the kind you buy in a 3-pack at Wal-Mart or Staples. The kind your piano teacher writes your progress in. That’s right, folks! I’m without my computer. The Macbook Air I purchased for my 2nd semester of college now belongs to me cousin and her husband. Sentences that might take a matter of 10 or 15 seconds to write (like this one) now take twice that time. But I don’t want to complain; rather, I want to give a review on the Air and look at the positives of this situation.

First: The Macbook Air. I was almost totally satisfied. In fact, were it not for my negative experience with Safari and a few freezing problems, I would have been absolutely satisfied, and these are the reasons why:

1. When designing the 3rd generation Macbook Air (the one I owned), Apple took a lesson from their design of the iPad, namely, flash storage. Instead of having a hard drive with a lot of moving parts, like most desktops and laptops, Apple used a Solid State Drive, reducing the risk of malfunction and effectively increasing speed. That means that when I bought my laptop, the time between me pushing the power button and arriving at a screen ready for me to use was about 5 seconds. It was FAST. Therefore I had no need to leave the computer on between uses to save time booting up. The flash storage was already saving time. So I could preserve small amounts of battery life that way.

2. The Air is SO LIGHT. And for a guy like me, who packs all his textbooks in his bag every day, just in case he can get some time in between classes to work on his homework, leaving a few pounds out of a backpack is REALLY nice. The model of the Macbook Air I owned (11-inch screen) weighted 2.3 pounds. And it functioned just fine (except for a few blips). You would think such a computer wouldn’t hold up to a lot of functions and programs, but I think it held its own; it packed a fair punch. So, despite its small weight and size (both advantages in my opinion) the Macbook Air has the capacity to perform the functions the average college student needs. I didn’t do much experimenting with iMovie or GarageBand, but I would assume that they work fine.

3. Functionability. You needn’t worry that you will have a hard time typing on a Macbook Air. The keyboard is the same size as any standard Mac keyboard (without a number pad, of course). The glass trackpad was big enough for me to perform the new Lion gestures, and to navigate in general, and you’ll be surprised how acceptable the screen size is if you use it for a little while. If you find there isn’t enough room on your screen, you can always zoom out to make windows smaller, OR, with the Lion substitute for Exposé (Mission Control) and Screen-To-Screen scrolling, you can give every app its own window and navigate through them quickly. Mac OS X Lion is a standard on every new Mac, including the Macbook Air, and it adds so much functionability.

Now the negative: My Macbook Air, while running under Safari, lost its ability to handle YouTube. Firefox works well, but there was something about YouTube that put Safari on he fritz, and caused my computer to freeze, even with the extra 2 gigabytes of Ram the computer came upgraded with (A total of 4 gigabytes). The plus side is that the Macbook Air has a Dual-Core processor, and Safari freezing would only consume the entire processing power of one core, leaving me ample time to save or close whatever I needed to. And the new Airs come default with at least a 1.6 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, which I presume would’ve solved my problem, or at least improved upon it. So, software aside and hardware alone, the Macbook Air I owned was fantastic. I was satisfied, and I would recommend it to any English Major, as I am. An 11-inch screen is absolutely adequate, processing power kept me afloat, and the design is so smooth. I give my model 4 ½ stars, and feel confident in recommending the latest model, though I haven’t used it yet. Good luck buying your Mac!

Update: I use Firefox now. There's something about Safari I don't like. :P Which reminds me...

:)