Apple MacBook Air MC968LL/A 11.6-Inch Laptop (NEWEST VERSION)

By 

Glenn R. Howes (Nashua, NH) –

  

  

  

I’ve been waiting for a new notebook for my wife, something that she can use both as her desktop notebook attached to a watch, mouse and keyboard and still take by the side of on business trips around the world. Ideally, something she could throw in her huge purse and go. The before edition of the MacBook Air was close, but too compromised in terms of processor alacrity. The Air is perfect for her.

At this writing, Amazon is selling two versions of the 11.6 inch MacBook Air, an i5 model with 2GB of RAM and 64 GB of SSD storage, and an i5 model with 4GB of RAM and 128 GB of SSD storage. You can peacefulness elsewhere a third model with an i7 processor, 4GB of RAM and 256 GB of SSD storage–the i7 is the low voltage 2 core version. This review aims at helping the consumer choose if a MacBook Air is the notebook for them, and if so, which one. Small answer is the i5/4GB/128GB model is probably the sweet spot of the lineup, but some people can get by the side of with the 64GB model as a second notebook, while others will need the ultimate and expensive model.

The strengths:
This notebook is quick. The combination of a Solid State Drive (SSD) hard drive and an i5 (or optionally an i7) processor make this the fastest notebook I’ve ever used, and I have a 2011 13″ MacBook Pro as my personal notebook. The SSD gives it a qualitative responsiveness–application launching, task switching–which any spinning disk laptop will be unable to match. Quantitatively, it more than keeps up with its better siblings in CPU intensive tasks. For model, my huge laptop can compile a large, commercial application I maintain using Xcode 4 in 9 minutes 38 seconds, this tiny sub notebook can do the same in 9 minutes 5 seconds.

This notebook is portable. I went to the community Apple Store and compared the 11.6 to the 13 inch MacBook Air, and while the 13 is extremely portable it is not a excellent fit for a woman’s purse. This 11.6 can near get lost in a purse, I can imagine my wife hunting around for a few seconds tiresome to find it. It’s ridiculously small. The 11.6 is half a pound lighter than the 13 and a pound heavier than an iPad 2.

Battery life when not below heavy load is excellent. I can web browse, and as long as I stay away from Flash websites, can do it for several hours. But, below load the 5 hours Apple promises for wireless web browsing becomes sub two hours. If the fan is on, the battery will not last, so it becomes time to figure out which page is running Flash, or which application is hogging all the CPU cycles. For model, I can drain the battery in about 2 hours 20 minutes watching full screen Netflix–which uses the Microsoft Silverlight plugin–over WiFi. I believe Apple no longer pre-installs Flash to pump up their claimed web browsing battery life claims. The better Air has more room for a battery and thus has a longer battery life. The battery life of my MacBook Pro is certainly at least an hour or two longer below the same approximate load.

The screen is gorgeous and crisp. Affect balance and draw a honor seem superior to that of my MacBook Pro’s (which isn’t terrible either). Viewing angles are excellent but not the spectacular IPS angles of an iPad. I had been wary of dropping down to the 11 inch screen from the 13 inch of my MacBook Pro, but I reckon I could work all day at this size especially if all I were doing was web browsing or video watching. I wouldn’t want to edit videos or do long term software development at this size, but of course there is a Thunderbolt port and with the appropriate MiniDisplay adaptor I could attach it to any watch. This will spend most of its life attached to a 21 inch LCD.

The keyboard is thankfully backlit. Typing is practically comfortable, even if I’d prefer another milimeter or two of key travel. Again, this will spend most of its life attached to an external keyboard so it doesn’t matter much but I much prefer the touch feel of my MacBook Pro.

The trackpad is large and Lion ready for all your taps, pinches, swipes (one, two, three and more fingers). Apple is renowned for its trackpads and this is no exceptions. Perfect finger feel, no stutters, accurate tracking.

Build quality. This is not some shoddy plastic netbook. The unibody construction is amazingly rigid and could be used to bludgeon an attacker in a pinch (and still keep on downloading).

The weaknesses:
Storage size is cramped, especially at the lower price points. I reckon the 64GB model targets users looking to keep all of their documents, metaphors, videos, music in “the cloud” and while I’m sure people will live in the cloud in the future, most of us live on Earth with our restricted alacrity Internet connections. The better capacities are fine for many people, including my wife, but…

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By 

E. Kim –

  

  

  

INTRODUCTION
I had considered buying the before generation MacBook Air (pre July 2011) but just couldn’t quite break down myself to spend the cash on apparatus that still used Intel’s Core 2 Duo CPUs (even with the fact that the older Airs were still really quite speedy). Apple was using the then newer generation Core i5/i7 CPUs on their other computers.

So when Apple updated their Airs with Intel’s significantly quicker Sandy Bridge i5/i7 CPUs, I became interested again. But, which size would be best for me?

11″ VERSUS 13″
I’ve been struggling over this choice on which size 2011 MBA would be better. It’s the usual dilemma with the 13″ boasting pretty much better specs and battery life than the 11″. Then I thought, well, the 13″ is ONLY 2″ better diagonally, and ONLY weighs a “small” more (and ONLY costs a “small” more).

But the reality (for me) is that for a truly mobile device, like an iPad, only the MBA 11″ has a shot at being mobile. The MBA 13″ is fantastic and certainly more mobile than a conventional MacBook Pro 13″, but the MBA 13″ is still IMHO more of a portable, than a mobile laptop.

The MBA 11″ is really mobile.

Once I realized this, there really was no longer a comparison to be made. They are two uncommon devices. One being mobile and the other very portable. I have a 2011 MBP 17″ which is my ultimate portable, and now my 2011 MBA 11″ is my mobile notebook.

PROS
1. Extremely quick CPU – The MBA 11″ comes with a Sandy Bridge 1.6 gHz dual-core Core i5 CPU (or a 1.8 gHz dual-core i7 directly from Apple for the MBA 11″ with 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD). Even with rumors to the contrary, the Turbo Boost and hyper threading capabilities were NOT turned off in the Core i5 CPUs. Geekbench benchmarks show extraordinary alacrity increases. The before generation MBA 11″ 1.4 gHz Core 2 Duo produced 2024 on Geekbench, while the 2011 MBA 11″ now produced 5040 for a 149% increase. This alacrity even rivals the 2010 MacBook Pro 17″ which scored 5423! (The 2011 MacBook Air 13″ uses a slightly quicker 1.7 gHz dual core i5 which scored 5860.)

2. Extraordinarily small! The MBA 11″ measures 11.8 x 7.56 x 0.68 inches, while the MBA 13″ is 12.8 x 8.94 x 0.68 inches. This means that the 11″ is “only” 1 inch shorter and “only” 1.3 inches less deep, but in reality, when you hold up both apparatus, the MBA 11″ feels like a completely uncommon apparatus. My wife uses a 2011 MacBook Pro 13″ which has a similar footprint to the MBA 13″. The MacBook Air 13″ still felt too much like a laptop, albeit an extraordinarily thin and light one.

3. Extraordinarily light! The MBA 11″ weighs 2.38 pounds (while the MBA 13″ weighs 2.96 pounds and an iPad 2 weighs 1.35 pounds) I really sometimes hold the MBA like an iPad while reading in bed because it’s so light. If you are seeking just a light, portable laptop, then the consequence of the MBA 11″ or 13″ would be fantastic, but if you (like me) are seeking a truly mobile device, then even fractions of a pound matter. The MBA 11″ weighs less and is consequently the better choice, but as amazingly light as it is, even lighter would be better. Its doubtful that a mobile device will ever exist that would be considered too light.

4. High-alacrity Thunderbolt (i.e. Lightpeak) port donation bidirectional 10 gigabits/s throughput – Thunderbolt technology is far more revolutionary than USB 3.0 or eSATA. Thunderbolt is NOT restricted to the use of a storage device. An external LCD can be attached. Even if I use the MBA 11″ as my mobile device, it may be acceptable as a primary notebook if one attaches an external LCD show and a high-alacrity Thunderbolt drive. Supposedly an external Thunderbolt hard drive would be near as quick as an internal hard drive.

5. All is solid state! This MBA feels more like a right “mobile” device since it is fully solid state with its solid state drive. I am far less worried about damaging this versus other laptops I’ve owned in the past.

6. Extremely quick cold starts and shutdowns thanks to the solid state drive and OS X.
7. Fantastic, full-size keyboard AND keyboard backlighting is back again! While this may seem like a minor point, the before generation Core 2 Duo Airs did not have the backlighting.
8. Tremendous, typical Apple build quality. The MBA feels like a piece of solid precision crafted machinery.
9. Same fantastic glass trackpad with even more gestures in OS X Lion to be used.
10. Comes with the new Mac OS X Lion (which I won’t discuss, but it will allow for apps to use a full-screen mode which is of benefit to MBA 11″ owners)
11. Extraordinary aesthetics – I can’t express adequately in words how gorgeous this apparatus looks.

CONS
1. Even if I have a Samsung LCD, the vertical and horizontal viewing angles are not near as excellent…

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By 

Y. Zhou –

  

hi there

i am not going to go into a deep review, as there are already a lot of reviews out there covering the same things. but I will talk about special things that other reviews may not have covered. I personally have owned the 2010 11″ and 13″ airs, and I currently own the 2011 macbook pro 15″ and 2011 11″ air. the 15″ is about 2x the processing power as the air (according to geekbench), but it lacks an SSD for quicker daily tasks.

– on Engadget, they recently covered that the 11″ air has a quicker SSD than the 13″ ones. not a difference you’ll notice but still a nice excuse to buy a smaller one (it was something like 240mbps vs 180mbps estimated)

– the battery life on the 11″ is really down from the before generation by about 30 minutes on battery saving settings. Last gen can get about 7 hours, this one is just over 6 (about 25% brightness, web browsing only). 13″ is only about 10 minutes shorter than the before gen. Also, air’s battery life plummets if it does moderate to heavy processing (flash, photo/movie editing, gaming), the pro’s battery life goes down, but by much less.

– online benchmarks show that the 2011 11″ air is about 2.5x quicker in processor alacrity than the 2010 model. but, if you by no means used an i5 or i7 processor before, know that you will also be able to multitask a lot better than the ancient core2duos. for model, you can edit in iMovies and photoshop at the same time (something that will lag the crap out of the ancient generation).

– DO NOT WORRY ABOUT THE SCREEN SIZE. with Lion, applications can take advantage of its fullscreen function. For model, for many native applications like Safari, Mail, Calendar, etc, you can fullscreen them and they’ll take up the entire screen, but, they dont really take up the main desktop screen, but a whole new screen on its own. if you have multiple fullscreen apps, you can use 4 fingers to flick between them, quick and efficient. I owned the last gen air 11″ with 10.6 SL, and it was a bit frustrating having multiple windows open, i usually have to minimize most of them. Now, you can browse in full 11″ screen, and use 4 fingers to flick to check your mail.

– keyboard and trackpad have more of an “umfph” feeling to them. a bit more resistance than the older models. the 2010 air was my first mac, and i was disappointed a bit by the light and cheap feeling keyboard, but the 2011 made it right.

– FYI, if you by no means owned a macbook, the “instant on” feature is really in all the unibody MacBooks and Pros, but they are just a bit slower than the air’s. so don’t reckon of it as a feature only the air has, it’s just a bit quicker.

– you can’t change anything in the air once bought, unlike the pro.

– screen quality is really worse than the Pro line up. Yes the air has more pixel density, but the vertical viewing angle is pretty terrible. it is NOT made of the same screen as the Pro and iPad (IPS), but, it is a matte screen so a much better screen in the sun. i owned both the 11″ and 13″, the viewing angle problem was much more noticeable on the 13″ just because the screen is larger. I always found myself adjusting the 13″ screen every time i go a bit.

– 2gb ram is enough to run lion just fine.

– sound seems to be slightly louder on the 13″ vs 11″. 11″ sound is TINY. i always turn it to max whenever i’m watching videos. receiver are a must.

– if you are deciding between a pro vs air, in general, i would say go with the pro if you do professional work with photo/movie editing, hardcore gaming (at least 15in), or if you plot on buying or already have a tablet. go with the air if you are a light user, want a tablet replacement. Owning an air and a tablet is a huge waste of cash.

– I would personally recommend the 1.6ghz, 4gb, 128ssd 11″ macbook air. I believe that is the most useful and “bang for the buck” you can get vs the rest of the lineup. but everyone’s preferences are uncommon.

All in all, my only complaint about this air is the price. the $1200 macbook pro 13″ vs the $1200 11″ macbook air, the air has a better hard drive, but thats it. it’s using less material to make, a slower processor, smaller battery, small and worse screen, less ports, i would reckon Apple can price it less than the macbook pro. basically, less all, but paying the same price because it has a excellent design. thats my 2 cents at least. $899 for the entry model would shut me up

Hope this will help you choose.

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