11:48PM
The New MacBook Air
Okay. I am weak. It started as a small nugget of an idea at Macworld and germinated slowly. The middle part is foggy but tonight I find myself on my couch setting up a MacBook Air (the HD version) and not exactly sure how it all happened. I guess Apple has that effect on people.
Anyway, the MacBook Air is entirely unable to do about 30% of my computing (video, music, and a few other things) and perfect for the other 70%, especially the lawyer side of things like Scrivener, Keynote, the Omni applications and other things work related. It is so thin on the edge that I think I could shave with it.
Anyway, I'm just getting set up and will be reporting back as I get deeper into it. One nugget of information: I have an external USB DVD player that is about 3 years old. I plugged it in to the Air and it recognized it without problem. It is not as pretty as the Apple external drive, but it gets the job done. Looking through my pile of software the only three disks that need to be installed are iWork, Office, and the Airport Utility. Stay tuned!
Reader Comments (3)
Congratulations. Use the Air in a similar way that you are considering.
One of the challenges that I had was to deal with the hard drive constraints. As you have the SSD, I would expect that you might be facing similar issues. I used Xslimmer to remove some unnecessary girth of various software (languages I do not use, also the PowerPC components in the software that are not necessary on an Intel Mac). I did this exercise a couple of weeks ago and the operation of the Mac was not affected.
David, Congrats on the new arrival. I am desperately trying to hold myself back from picking up an Air until they offer one with a 160GB drive. Like you, I'd be going from a MBP to an Air and I know I can live without the muscle but I am not so sure I could live (or live well) without the cargo space. Eagerly awaiting your writings about your experiences making the transition.
The drive space hasn't really been much of a problem. I have everything I need to handle work and photography and am only using 45 gig. Obviously I'm keeping most data off the drive. I'll post more details as I sort it all out.