MacBook Air review after a month

categories: Uncategorized
published: February 4, 2009
reading time: 3 minutes

I’ve been a PC-Windows user for many years now, i used to have an IBM PS/2, then Windows 3.1, 95, 98 onto 2000 and i switched for XP.
I’ve been having Linux and Windows on my laptop for more than 2 years and when my XP became an incubus of virus, i naturally switched onto Ubuntu as my desktop.

That’s about my 3 Kg Dell Laptop, but as i came to using it on a daily basis and as i came fed up with the weight and size of this computer :

I decided to try the new MacBook Air. It's been more than a month now and i thought a review would be usefull.

So here we go Pros and Cons.

Pros

<div style="text-align:left;">
  <ul>
    <li>
      The weight and size are just like i wanted and it's not like having an eeePC with a small keyboard and a small touchpad and micro-sized-Screen.
    </li>
    <li>
      The backlit-keyboard is just great to use, but the mapping... needs some accomodation time, especially for programming
    </li>
    <li>
      It's not getting hot like some notebook when you're using it, therefor no annoying fan sounds and no extremely hot temperature.
    </li>
    <li>
      The performance is quite good, with games, and compiling, (it can compile OpenOffice.org ... (9 hours) but you can still use the computer with almost no performance issues)
    </li>
    <li>
      It supports also Windows Xp on Parallels Desktop with no big issues
    </li>
    <li>
      <span style="font-style:italic;">XCode, fink</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Macports</span> are great tools for developper that can turn it into an as good as Linux programming machine
    </li>
    <li>
      There is no issue with Flash player like there is sometimes under Linux with <span style="font-style:italic;">Alsa</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">flashplugin-nonfree</span>
    </li>
    <li>
      and MacOSX is a nice Operating System, and there's still a terminal in case
    </li>
  </ul>
  
  <div style="text-align:center;">
    <p>
      <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cons</span>
    </p>
    
    <ul style="text-align:left;">
      <li>
        It's not a performance computer, you obviously can't play while compiling when a virtual machine is running but you can enjoy each of these tasks.
      </li>
      <li>
        There is two main package manager for MacOSX <span style="font-style:italic;">fink </span>and <span style="font-style:italic;">MacPorts, </span>they can allow you to use <span style="font-style:italic;">apt-get install </span>and enjoy a few package for Mac that you can find under Linux, but there's not everything, and several tools like PHP, Apache, perl ... are already on the Mac, but not with any of these package manager. Therefor sometimes you have to install twice some tools.
      </li>
      <li>
        The mapping of the keyboard is good for everyday life, but when you need to do some programming, you may sometimes get confused by the mapping (especially if you're doing LateX), and you won't be as efficient, at first, as under an azerty PC keyboard.
      </li>
    </ul>
    
    <div style="text-align:left;">
      <p>
        I guess the subject is endless, but for me i would definitely buy it again.
      </p>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>