no ethernet port. one usb port. no replaceable battery. no disc drive. 4200rpm hard drive --- but it's THIN!

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It probably has intel's draft N wireless on board which is faster then what most people have for ethernet.

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You're supposed to use the airport (wireless). The loss of optical drive is significant, how do you update the OS in a year or two when Apple releases a new version? You're expected to use an external? Then it's not very portable is it?

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Apple introduced a new feature called Remote Drive that enables you to use the SuperDrive (Read: normal CD/DVD) of another computer wirelessly.

Normally you do not need a SuperDrive on the road so I don't see it as an issue.

The name, MacBook Air, indicates you are supposed to embrace the wireless life heh.

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Wireless is completely useless when sshing to another system remotely, in even moderate traffic settings.

Draft-n approaching 100 Mbps ethernet? Dream on; it'll be great if it gets even half that.

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The best I've seen in my laptop testing is around 7.5MBps of real throughput. That works out to 60Mbps - so better than 802.11g theoretical maximum, but still about 2/3 the speed of 100Mbit Ethernet. (Note also that many 802.11n chips seem to get more like 4-5MBps average rates, in ideal circumstances.) Now, go use any decent laptop these days and you get Gigabit, with speeds of around 40MBps easily achievable (the bottleneck generally being the hard drive(s) involved in transfers).

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7.5MB/s really is not that terrible compared to fast ethernet. Fast ethernet typically only gets 6-9MB/s from windows to windows transfers(standard file sharing), and I've personally seen 10MB/s with Linux -> Windows with Samba, and 11.4MB/s with Linux -> Windows iSCSI.

GbE on the other hand really does not get much more than 30MB/s sustained for long periods of time. It has nothing really to do so much with the HDDs speeds as the disk block size vs TCP/IP packet sizes, and conversion. This of course would be on the garden variety home user type hardware, and laptop hardware should not be any better, or probably even as good. The new Windows Vista + TCP/IP stack etc, is purportedly supposed to fix this issue, but I guess we'll have to wait and see, because from what I understand it is still a work in progress.

Still, your point is made; GbE > 802.11n concerning transfers, although, if you didn't need security, firewire networking would do pretty well . . .

Anyhow for a Portable PC, I think I would rather have a modded Asus Eee, with a 80GB HDD in it. Something for mobile media files, and to have something on hand to upload RAW images to from my DSLR. Then again, I am not much for mobile system, except for what they can help me with while I am away from my desktop.

However, If I were working in the wireless internet business, etc, and needed to have a PC on a rooftop with me while aligning an antenna or something, then the Mac Air would probably be the last laptop on the planet I'd need/want.

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andreschmidt, don't need a drive on the road? I want to watch a DVD perhaps...

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I am thinking about boxing my optical drive in a USB 2.0 enclosure so I can use it with all of my computers. Maybe that is an option with these too if you don't like using the WiFi for that.

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This is PERFECT!
I had just ordered a five pound black MacBook for my 80's mother, and it's going back!
It was to be her first ever computer, and was chosen for it's light weight, small size, and easy to see white-on-black keys.


At only three pounds (almost HALF the weight)and with a brighter, easer to read screen the MacBook Air is just right.

She will not be doing video editing, gaming, or use it to record HDTV shows.

She just wants to do word processing, email, and internet.
You could use a Celeron 300A for that!

Plus she'll get to have all the geeks drooling all over it! ;)

Thank You, Steve.

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