Sonoma State Star

Issue date: 4/15/08 Section: Features

The new MacBook Air may be revolutionary in size, but leaves many standard features behind. [Click to enlarge]

"The world's thinnest notebook." "Revolutionary." "One of a kind." These are just a few of the terms used to describe the new MacBook Air from Apple. How revolutionary is it though? Like everything Apple releases, it's difficult to tell if one of their new products is truly is revolutionary or just another arbitrary electronic. Indeed the Air is the world's thinnest notebook, but is it worthy of the attention it's receiving let alone the $1,800 asking price? Do you need to upgrade from your existing laptop to the Air?

Let's begin with the Air's strengths. The laptop weighs three pounds and at its thickest, is well under an inch in girth. It will wirelessly connect to any 802.11 A/B/G and N networks. The N standard has yet to become official, but the Air will support prerelease dubbed "Draft N". The multi touch technology found in Apple's iPhone's has now been incorporated into Air's "trackpad" or touchpad used in place of a mouse. This enables the zooming in and out along with the rotating of photos and text in specific Apple applications.

The Air does not include an optical drive nor an Ethernet port for wired internet. The reasoning behind the exclusion of an optical drive is the Air's ability to wirelessly connect to another Mac or PC and use that computers optical drive. You insert a disc in the neighboring computer and connect the Air to that computer wirelessly. You can then run the disc on the Air streaming it off the neighboring computer. This is pretty incredible but without control over a neighboring computer, you're out of luck if you need a disc drive.

Now let's look at where Apple cut corners. The lack of an Ethernet port on the Air will undoubtedly be an annoyance for many without wireless routers. The Macbook Air contains a Core 2 Duo Processor which was specifically redesigned for the Macbook Air, reducing the chips size by 60 percent. This results in a lowered clock speed and ultimately a decrease in performance. The largest hard drive offered for the notebook is 80gb. The 160gb iPod offers twice the storage space of the Air.

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