Notebook
MacBook Air…
The MacBook Air is the newest addition to Apple’s notebook product pipeline. I am not going to attempt to do a technology review on the MacBook Air as that has already been done by so many others. What I am going to review is the overall idea with some of the features along with my opinion. The MacBook Air is Apple’s addition to the arena of sub-notebooks. I think that this computer market is not nearly as big as the current 15 inch to 17+ inch standard notebooks.
Apple’s MacBook Air Offcial Ad
The feature that ranks highest on my chart is the multi-touch pad. Although I think that they should have taken this technology from their iPhone further on the MacBook Air however this multi-touch pad is still new to the market.
On the bottom of my feature chart is the fact that the MacBook Air does not come with a internal drive bay. Apple calls this "Remote Disc". Basically it is the same as mapping a drive from a local network PC to the another PC. The reason I think that this feature is horrible is because most people will feel intimidated and therefore not buy the MacBook Air. In my opinion Apple should have made the Air a little thicker and included one of their internal Super-Drives to make a more complete product. I don’t think that most people traveling would want to carry around an external drive bay and would rather opt to have a notebook that is a little thicker with the basic features.
In my opinion Apple would have made a better addition to their current product lineup by announcing at least a tablet notebook; if not a multi-touch display only notebook, such as the OMPC. This is a topic that many others are talking about on the net and we can only hope that Apple provides what its customers want.
If you have an opinion or would like to link a review of the MacBook Air to this post please do in the comments.
Notebook PC…
Although the MDA is the Ultra Mobile device my notebook can be more versatile & powerful. I am running Windows XP on this machine because with a 1.7 GHz processor & only 1 GB of DDR2 RAM this is hardly a powerhouse to be running Windows Vista. I think that the hardware recommendations that Microsoft requires for users to run Vista Ultimate are way too low to actually run the OS smoothly. However, I did try to run Windows Vista but it was not nearly as fast as Windows XP; not to mention that the ATI 9600 mobile graphics card could barely run the Windows Vista Aero Glass effect while keeping up with all the other programs I run. Yes, I know that I could just run fewer programs at once and probably make it work, but what fun is that! If I am going to be using a piece of hardware, I want to be able to do anything with it.
With that said, I hardly think that a Windows Mobile device or UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) can take its place. My notebook definitely has its niche in my daily activities. The ability to run any program made for windows as well as try out new software I may come across in a mobile form factor is unbeatable. The laptop obviously has a bigger screen then a smaller device therefore creating a more productive workspace. I also occasionally run a Live CD distribution of Linux called Ubuntu. I have not used any other versions of Linux that are available at http://www.linux.org/ but I know that since Linux is a free based Operating System that I appeals to many. Not to mention the few manufactures that are giving the consumer the option to even have a version of Linux on their PC from the factory is a big step.
I set up my desktop perhaps a little different than most. Here is a screen shot of my current notebook desktop.
If you would like to leave a comment please do so by clicking on the “comments” link below this post or if you would like to share a screen shot of your current desktop email me by clicking on the link at the bottom of this page and I will post it for others to see.
Knee Jerk Reaction 