MacBook Air—anyone have one?

[Dottore]

I'm thinking of picking up one of these for travel. I've read many good things about them, and people that have them seem to love them.

My use is mainly word processing and email when on the road (I would rely on my I Mac when not on the road) so the absence of ports and drives is not an issue.

Would love to hear about "actual" useful battery life between charges—and reliability issues from anyone who has one—as well as any other comments.

Cheers and thanks.

[stomachmonkey]

Got a couple here in the office.

Like em. Nice little box.

Seems like you understand it's purpose and have appropriate expectations.

[campbellcj]

I love mine. It is wonderful for travel overall, although the battery life is not great. I have not been anal about clocking it, but figure maybe 2.5 hours or so depending what you're doing. There is only 1 USB port built-in, and it is recessed, so I bring a small hub to plug in my USB 3G modem, mouse, iPhone charger, etc. I typically leave the external CD/DVD drive at home.

The ergonomics, aesthetics and build quality are just outstanding. The screen is gorgeous, although I find it hard to use for serious word processing, development, or graphics work as I'm used to large (22"+) screens and full-size ergo keyboards. But for email and web browsing it is a pleasure to use.

[nostatic]

I can't use one because it doesn't have enough horsepower. My laptop is my only computer right now, and I do video editing, photoshop work, etc on it. An Air won't cut that. For typical use however it is plenty fast, and they are light and airy. 2-3 hours seems to be about the norm unless you are really good and conserving power.

[jonbot]

Have you looked at these?

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop-inspiron-9?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&~oid=us~en~29~mini_deals_new_1~~

I don't know how computer savvy you are, but a friend of mine "hacked" his to run apple OSX, it works great, it's like a very tiny macbook, except much cheaper

[nota]

I have heard of mac's running a PC windoz O/S
but how does a PC run a mac's OS-X
and how well does it work
esp on power hungry programs adobie's stuff

wife likes Mac's but I donot like paying 2X for the box
and her older mac is getting iffie

[RKC]

Love mine for travel. Had an original, ran out of HD space pretty quickly, so got the 128 solid drive, and now I'm fine.

Quick enough for regular Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver type stuff.

I usually just use it for various meetings, with very little on it, a duplicate of the info on a stick or on the iDisk.

Always wanted light, and way better than my 12lb+ Zenith 181 of 1988!!

I am MacPro at work, iMac at home and MacBookAir on the road or commuter train.

Battery life isn't much, but I have a charger at home, another at work and an airline adapter, so I usually don't even carry one with me....

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by nota

I have heard of mac's running a PC windoz O/S
but how does a PC run a mac's OS-X
and how well does it work
esp on power hungry programs adobie's stuff

wife likes Mac's but I donot like paying 2X for the box
and her older mac is getting iffie

There is a chip on the Mac logic boards that OS X looks for in order to run/install.

Kind of a similar concept to Windows OEM discs that are built to recognize the target box that the disc shipped with and only allow installation on that manufacturers box.

So to get OS X to run on a non Mac you need a hacked installer that does not look for the chip or a patch that tricks the installer into thinking the chip exists.

[jonbot]

Originally Posted by nota

I have heard of mac's running a PC windoz O/S
but how does a PC run a mac's OS-X
and how well does it work
esp on power hungry programs adobie's stuff

wife likes Mac's but I donot like paying 2X for the box
and her older mac is getting iffie

What stomachmonkey said, there is some hack information floating around on the internetz, I'm sure googling will yield results.

I'm not sure how adobe's stuff runs, my friend has OSX loaded on that Dell 9" laptop, so all he is doing is surfing the web, running open office apps, going to youtube, playing music and such, but I gotta tell you, it runs great!

The key is getting a machine containing hardware that's compatible with OSX. That Dell 9" is compatible, but if you even step up to the 10", you will have all kinds of problems getting OSX to run on it. I'm sure there's a forum somewhere online where guys have listed all the compatible computers.

Sorry Dottore! Didn't mean to hijack thread!

[dad911]

I'm typing this now on a Dell 9", running Ubuntu. Use it all the time for email and browsing. My other laptop is a macbook.

[stomachmonkey]

google hackintosh

[JavaBrewer]

Why in the world would anyone hack the OSX installer when a free Ubuntu OS is just a download away?