I'm a tough critic, let's face it. I tend to really beat on things and I know it. I'd like to say this would be different but it's not. This is my review on the Macbook Air. As with most I'll organize it into categories, usefulness, power, hardware quality, software quality, price, and features. Let's jump right into it.

Power: The Macbook air is of course the smallest laptop in the world (well, was until the Eee PC), but don't let it's size fool you, it's just as powerful as far as Processor speed and RAM as the standard MacBook. The Air does lack on one major feature though, harddrive space, in a day when 160 gigs in a laptop are standard, the Air is short changed at an 80 gigabyte standard or a 64 gigabyte solid state drive. The solid state saves power but sacrifices room and it's a 1000 dollar "upgrade." The reason I'd avoid it is because solid state drives are not all they are cracked up to be, they have a very fast random seek time, meaning they find files very fast, but they have a slower write time than standard drives. Solid state drives are ideal in a hybrid setup, I don't know about Macs, but windows drivers for hybrid drives make Windows store the pagefile.sys and Virtual Ram on the solid state drive, as most files that are stored there are small, and things like documents and music and such are kept on the standard.

Hardware quality: kind of a hard one to rate on the Air. Things like the screen, keyboard, and casing on the Air are yes very high quality. It feels very sturdy and well built. One issue I had on the keyboard was that although full sized, the keys had almost no resistance to them, bearly thouching them would start it typing, making it easy to make mistakes.The screen was a beautiful LCD but the LCD lighting tended to make the center of the screen slighty darker than the rest, as well as using slightly more power. The case is built out of sturdy aluminum, but is slighty heavier and also forms a major issue when you go to set it on your lap after it's been on, it gets *hot*. I though it was a "laptop" not a stove top.

Software Quaity: Well of course it comes loaded with the newest version of MacOS 10.5 Leopard, so there is really nothing for me to comment or complain about new. Just read my earlier articles for the exact same info I could fill up pages to add here.

Features: This is the Air's weak spot. By features I don't mean software features (well, one I do) as it's Mac OS so nothing special VS any other Mac. Features that it does have include jeastures on the touchpad. For instance, pinch (iPhone), rotation (use two fingers to rotate images), and skip (three fingers to go back and forth in Safari or iTunes). Now before I go further, look at the Macbook and think about *who* it's intended for, road warriors would be my guess. Well here is the issue, it lacks half the features travelers need, 3G wireless or a slot for Wireless boradband card, only one USB, and biggest of all to me, no CD drive......... I see how Apple made it so tiny, they just stripped out everything that most of us use. In order to use a CD, you either have to buy a seperate USB CD drive (using your only USB port) or use a program on the MacOS 10.5 disk that comes with it (ironic that they send it on a disk no?). The program on the MacOS disk can be used on a PC or Mac and allow the Air to use their CD drive as it's own. What *really* bothered me is that in the tutorial video I watched, the Apple Exec continually said "this new and powerful feature". "New" feature huh? It's only been new to PC users since NT 4.0 in 1996........

Price: The biggest negative everybody has with Apple computers, the cost. This PC can cost in upwards of $3000. The price is just not worth it when the MacBook Pro is the same price and twice as powerful, and that's not considering a PC.

Usefulness: The entire usefulness of this machine is strongly dampered by its lack of hardware that *everybody* uses. Come on Apple, at *least* and I mean at *LEAST* give us a CD drive. Honesly how many people who buy this evidently gold plated computer and still have a second one to use as a CD drive? Yeah it's light, but honestly my Toshiba only weighs a wopping 4.7 pounds, and it's the got the same full sized keyboard and a fully lite screen, not LED. I don't have to skip on storage with 120 gigabyte hard drive either. So my verdic, invest your money on a computer several times more powerful and get *those* bragging rights instead, like the Macbook Pro or a high end PC laptop. Trust me, being able to brag "I have the smallest laptop ever" is not as good as "I have an insainly powerful laptop".