Our new MacBook Air was purchased as Mrs Blighty's main computer to replace a much loved but somewhat battered 12" PowerBook G4. Mrs B works from home a lot, with her computer on her knees but also has to lug it into the office and around to the 26 schools she and her team regularly work in. So the requirement was for a horsepower upgrade from the G4 CPU to allow the latest multi-media gizmos to be used in the presentations while also being light weight and robust for all that travel. It sounds like the MacBook Air should be a perfect fit - was it?
The Ordering
The MacBook was ordered from the Apple store online in the UK- I played by usual trick of loading up the shopping basket and then waiting for a few days to see if I really wanted to buy something that expensive - and also to play chicken with the Apple sales managers. Again they blinked first and I got a friendly email from Ger in Ireland saying he had noticed the saved basket and was there 'anything he could do to help.'
I usually by my Macs from the Apple store online, but it's always best to speak to a person rather than just place the order online- why? Because the sales staff have some discount discretion that you only get if you talk to them! So I talked with Ger about what we wanted, how it was going to be used and by whom – this last bit turned out to be important as Mrs B heads up a charity that works in schools in our county and Ger disappeared for 10 minutes and then called back with education pricing and we saved enough on the MacBook Air and iWork 08 and other software to buy me an iPod Touch (look for that in a later review)
The Arrival
The package turned up a week earlier than the advertised 'expected' date which was great news - as it turned out to be the day before a conference Mrs B had organised so MacBook Air was quickly co-opted as media player for the event.
The unboxing
The MacBook Air comes packaged in a solid and surprisingly small box, with a fit and finish like a Rolls-Royce.
I wont rework the 'unboxing bore' stories that abound the web from each new Apple product, but I will say that for the first time, this products packaging is as much a work of art as the product itself.
The migration
Migrating data from the existing PowerBook running Tiger to the MacBook Air running Leopard was not that obvious - the Tiger migration assistant requires a Firewire connection and the Leopard Wireless migration assistant would not talk to it. The answer is simple, stick the leopard install DVD that came with the MacBook Air into the old laptop and install the migration assistant from there- there is a stand alone installer provided for this scenario. The only problem was no-where in the documentation with the MacBook Air did I find this gem of information- it took some input from Mr Google and a search of the Apple support forums to find the answer.
Once the migration assistants were up and running on the two machines we were ready to copy the Mrs B's life from the old machine to the new. I found the migration assistant was not has granular as I would have liked - I would have liked to choose which applications to copy across rather than the simple binary of all or none. In the end I decided to copy them all and to see what happened...
Several hours passed while all the email (she never deletes or archives) and media files (lots of iTunes songs) copied across and the applications.
When it finally finished we were ready to go- apple mail worked right away and overall I was impressed with how the migration tools had worked- the only thing that failed to work was Office X for mac- the associations with the all the office file extensions (.doc, .xls etc) were broken and none of the Office applications themselves would run. A return to the Apple forums found similar but not identical issues and in the end I deleted the Office X folder and copied it back across by hand- and it had worked perfectly ever since.
The using
Using a MacBook Air is a real joy - on those few opportunities I manage to wrestle it out of Mrs B's hands - and she loves it to and the admiring glances and comments it regularly solicits. It really is much lighter that her old machine and any other laptop I've ever used and that makes it so much more comfortable to use on your lap. Running iWork and Office the machines just flies along and smoothly plays video files and the most creative Keynote presentations we can come up with- as a work a day multimedia office machine it is a dream. Playing DVD in classrooms also works fine requiring just a little faffing to plug in the external superdrive (optional extra) and video adapter cable (supplied).
In use the MacBook Air feels solid and well made - actually feeling more solid than the 12" powerbook it replaces - and the fit an finish is impeccable.
The rear light on the keyboard was put to good use the first day after the MacBook Air arrived when it spend the day as the media player at a conference Mrs B had organised running a huge keynote presentation with lots of embedded movie clips. Sitting the back of the darkened auditorium the illuminated keys were a god-send while driving the keynote and I'm sure this will find the MacBook Air a place in many conference centres, schools and places of worship for just this reason.
The screen is one of Apple's new LED based units and it is bright and clear and a joy to use.
Both the screen and keyboard light levels can be manually controlled or left up to the ambient light sensor which normally does a fine job of setting the levels for you.
My only reservation about the whole machine is that the cables on the SuperDrive and Video Adapter are very thin and feel a bit fragile- I've seen no evidence that the actually are after 8 weeks of regular use but I will wait to see if they will last a long as their heavier weight predecessors.
The final thoughts
The MacBook Air is a great little machine and as long as you don't want to do lots of video editing or GarageBanding I don't think you will ever notice the smaller drive or marginally slower CPU compared to the rest of the Apple Laptop range. Some people call it expensive but don't forget its actually £100 cheaper than the cheapest MacBook Pro so for people who want to be able to take their laptop with them where-ever they go it makes a fine alternative to the MacBook or MacBook Pro.
Highly Recommended 5/5
MacBook Air from £1199 available from www.apple.com/uk
