Daisuke Papipupipu’s Technology Guide

With its tiny form factor, it is not surprising to hear that the Macbook Air is currently the thinnest laptop in the market and the lightest 13 inch laptop in the industry. But to achieve this, Apple needed to sacrifice many of the essential equipments that people consider to be a basic requirement for everyday use. The computer itself lacks an Ethernet port and a security slot, which are only available through an external USB to Ethernet adapter. Apart from this, the Macbook Air only has one USB port, but with a smaller size than traditional ones. This means that some peripheral devices won’t work on this system, unless the user decides to buy and use an external USB hub. Without these ports, the user will need to carry more items and this adds weight to the overall carriage. By considering this, it is easy to think that there is no meaning to buy a computer like this if the overall weight increases. In this case, the Macbook Air is easily defeated by other small and light 13 inch laptops in the industry because of the lack of basic ports. However, like other Apple laptops, the computer maintains a minimalistic design that visually appeals to most of the consumers and by being lighter and smaller, it attracts huge amounts of people. This is an important factor to Apple because this is the only key of success of the laptop since it lacks many ports. Apart from this, the computer is in danger for its outdated and low-end features. This happened since the designers needed to sacrifice everything to create a small and light computer. The Macbook Air has a slow, but small Core 2 Duo processor that uses the old Merom technology of Intel, one of the first processor technologies of the mobile Core 2 technology. Since the Macbook Air was released near the beginnings of 2008, it has been criticized for not including the newer Penryn microchips, which improves overall performance of the computer because of the use of a 45 nanometer dual core. Also, Macbook Air’s processor reduces overall performance and increases heat by having a specially designed body that reduces the size. The heat problem is even worsened from the small size that reduces overall temperature management. Some people have already complained about the extreme heat of the computer that sometimes causes the processor to shut down. This problem is extremely serious because every time the chip shuts down the user would need to remake the work that was stopped. After this, Apple introduced a software update, but this couldn’t fulfill the people’s needs; therefore, reviewers gave the update unsatisfactory responses. The chip problem is not the only performance based conflict the Air has. This thin computer has an extremely slow hard drive with a reading speed of a mere 4200 rpm and a size of 80 gigabytes. Considering that the computer has a webcam like other line of Apple notebooks, 80 gigabytes is not a sufficient size to store videos and pictures. For example, if a person records 10 videos with 1 minute each, the user would lose 10 gigabytes of the hard drive. This is a huge amount since the preinstalled software would take about 10 gigabytes of the hard drive and the OS would take more memory from the computer. Because of these performance problems, the sacrifice of major components of a computer doesn’t satisfy the needs of a consumer regardless of the appearance. There is a higher chance that the buyer would choose to purchase other slim 13 inch notebook systems such as the Dell XPS m1330 and the CR series of Vaio that doesn’t throw away the essentials of a computer. Like the Dell XPS One (stated in the last post of “Competition to the iMac”), the Macbook Air is broken down into a small consumer range that are willing to give up performance over appearance. However, the buyer would need to sacrifice one other thing: price. The Macbook Air has a base price that starts around the 2000 dollars mark, which is over priced for a 13 inch laptop. Many other 13 inch laptops with higher configurations start under the 1000 dollar mark, meaning that these are better choices for most people. Nevertheless, the computer is still one of a kind and no other competitor offers a system like the Macbook Air. Even with this, the Macbook Air remains a hard choice for many, apparently showing the weaknesses of such laptop systems.

Information from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Air http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/apple-macbook-air-80gb/4505-3121_7-32818756.html

Filed under: computers and tagged 13 inch laptop, Air, Apple, computer, Core 2 Duo, dell, Intel, laptop, Macbook, Macbook Air, Merom, notebook, Penryn, xps