Bought a MacBook Air!

Right now, yes. Of course the eee pc would be more practical, only because of price. And I would chose it over the MBA today because of that. If the MBA and the eee pc were the same price, which one would you pick?
More expandible than the MBA, not really. The only expansion the eee has is an SD card slot. Its stuck with its built in flash size. You could easily drop a 500 gig laptop drive (yes, Hatachi has made them, you'll start seeing them available this year) in to an MBA. Thats not even including what kind of sizes and prices SSD drives will be poping up all over the place this year.

 

I hate to burst your bubble, but you can't... most laptop drives have multiple platters in them, but for the dimensions of the air Apple went with a design that requires a single platter laptop drive, and i hate to say it, but those aren't anywhere near 500 gigs yet. If they were, you'd be seeing desktop drives that are easily 5-6TB, and i haven't seen one of those yet.

 

Nyet.

The Eee has a SD card slot, which is great... 16GB SDHC cards are available and 32GB cards are coming onto the market. It also has 3 USB ports which you could use to expand storage (memory sticks, portable hard drives, etc), and a VGA-out port, so you could use it as a proper workstation in a pinch.

 

You buy a Macbook Air if you need to carry a computer around. That's all. The "shortcomings" would be shortcomings in a desktop computer, maybe. In a computer that will mostly be used for presentations typing on the go and organizer getting rid of unwanted features is brilliant.

The most important features for the notebook traveler: thinness and weight. And on those the Air wins..

And seriously if you are still hung up on optical media and ethernet while traveling you need to join the 21st century.

 

Great, but a lot of hotels are still in the 20th century. I've been to multiple hotels in the last year that only offer ethernet in the room. Maybe you could send them the apple Kool-Aid and a bunch of airports, but that's just the way it is.

 

If you really insist, take a look at this:

Newegg.com - SMC SMC2208USB/ETH 10/ 20/ 100/ 200Mbps USB Ethernet Adapter 1 x RJ45 - Retail

25 bucks for an adapter... and it's small enough to fit pretty much anywhere. It may not be terribly fast, but the hotels i've stayed in with ethernet in the room are barely better than dialup anyways. For 20th century use, this'll work just fine.

 

And Apple sells its own as well:

The Apple Store (U.S.) - Apple USB Ethernet Adapter

 

Perhaps not while travelling, but corporate networks are usually wired. In fact, even the fastest wifi is just nothing compared to a professionally installed wired gigabit network (and oh please don't believe the advertised numbers!), particularly if a lot of computers are connected.

Being a bit of a road warrior myself, I want a laptop that is small and light indeed, but that can be hooked up properly to the corporate network for fast syncing, backup, access to corporate data, new software deployment, etc...
Perhaps a good docking station can solve this dilemma, but I'm not sure if that single USB port will do the job.

 

r u trading it in?? why not run both? use the larger one for file storage if you have to. heck my mac has only an 80- GB hard drive but i manage even with 65 GB of music loaded onto the 4 ipods i have. i just store all the music on an external drive. nowadays, they so cheap its foolish to not use one.

 

Unless you are transferring Gigabytes of data it won't make a difference. I do both, lots of word documents and entire DVDs. For DVDs I use my gigabit network. For data like documents wireless is just fine.

USB has higher throughput than ethernet so it is not a problem.

 

Again, why not just buy an Eee, which has ethernet, 3X as many USB ports, and a VGA out port... if I were doing presentations, I'd probably want that VGA out port.

 

The Air has both VGA and DVI port (adapters). Don't take me wrong. I like the Eee. I think they are both proportional to their price.

 

Even my Macbook doesn't have a VGA port on it - it does have an adapter for one that is small and works flawlessly, though. And if you're that concerned about USB ports, try this:
http://www.amazon.com/Linksys-USBHUB4C-ProConnect-Compact-4-Port/dp/B0000658CH
4 ports, no additional power cord needed.

 

Well I Bought a DELL Inspiron 9400

From an environmental standpoint, is the Air worth it?
(FWIW, I spent double that amount on the DELL)

- how resellable is it, ie, you'll want bigger - faster soon enough
- how is the battery "standard" to other notebooks
- how much power consumed to do your "work" compared to before purchase


One thing I like about it is it's easy maintenance, meaning, being able to swap out the mobo with a Gen 2 or 3 Air, thus not having to ditch the entire notebook....which is what I've done with ALL my previous PC notebooks to get more power.

My next PC based notebook I'll definately want something I can service myself, better HD, better CPU, better graphics.

My current DELL Inspiron 9400 with 17" 1920x1200 screen, I'd like to simply upgrade my cpu, memory at 2g is fine, perhaps a bigger hd from the current 120g.

 

I just got mine. I love it! Everyone has their own needs.

I bought an external optical drive with it, for those rare occasions when I need to install something or burn a CD. I won't bring that with me on travel.

I bought an ethernet dongle for those rare occasions when the hotel doesn't have wireless. I normally use wireless at home and at work, so I won't be using that dongle very much. I'm already used to always having to carry a VGA dongle with me to plug into projectors for presentations. So two dongles and a power adapter when I travel.

I won't be editing video, so the relatively small hard drive is fine by me. Overall the system performance seems better than my previous laptop with a 5400 rpm hard drive, probably since this one has more memory. Dual processors doesn't hurt either.

I don't like the fact that I can't expand the 2 GB memory. I may trade up to another MacBook Air when they put more memory in it.

The battery is replaceable with a screwdriver. It has a connector to the motherboard -- it's not soldered in. I was never one of those who carries around an extra battery to swap in the middle of a flight, so the MBA's battery approach works for me. So far, the battery life per charge seems a fair bit longer than my previous 12" Al Powerbook.

I can't remember a time when I plugged in more than one USB device. My one Firewire and two USB ports on my previous laptop were always used one at a time. So one USB port is just dandy. I don't have any plans to buy a USB hub for it, but that would just be one more dongle.

By the way, all of my devices are USB, so I don't mind the loss of Firewire. Except I'm not sure if it will support target mode like the old ones did with Firewire. You would be able to put the laptop in a mode where it behaved like a hard drive instead of a computer, and you could plug it into another computer. If that is no longer possible with USB, then at some point I will be cursing when I'm trying to move something or fix something between computers.

I agree that I paid a few hundred bucks just for the thinness, lightweight, and portability, but that is important to me and worth it. And I have to admit that the sleekness and pure joy of using the thing with all its Applely user thoughtfulness helps greatly with my satisfaction with this purchase. For all those folk who complain about people paying for sexiness, you should go touch one, pick it up, and use it. You should not be selling short your Apple stock.

If Apple does what they did with the iPhone, they'll lower the price by a few hundred bucks in a few months. I'll be less satisfied then, probably pissed off, but oh well. I needed a new laptop now.

 

Re: Well I Bought a DELL Inspiron 9400

Yes! Macs have a much longer usable life than PC counterparts. Just go to ebay and see how little Macs depreciate compared to other PCs.

 

I brought up it's shortcomings as a 'main' computer, because the OP said that they were going to make it their main computer.

As a side unit, another one to have as you flop on the couch, yeah, it would be nice.

But it can't possibly your main computer, unless you do very little lifting, so to speak, with it.

And to the person who never uses more then one USB device: Man, I am so not like you.

Wireless optical mouse
Printer
Keyboard
iPod charger
iPhone charger
iPod Shuffle charger
two thumb drives, connected via one USB Tardis Hub

I may be forgetting something...and I use two Fire Wire connected external hard drives, one 500GB, the other twice that size.


All on my iMac, so I have to use USB hubs there. It's one of the areas I think Apple is weak on: Lack of ports. Meanwhile, my HP Vista machine, has at least five USB ports.

 

I don't think using hubs is any different than having them built-in. At least the hub you can hide out of sight. You could use a hub to connect all those peripherals to an Air as well. Firewire would be the only problem but although slower, external USB drives could serve the same function.

 

TJ, my point about only using one USB device was using it on the road Like you, i have a ton of peripherals connected to my computer, but all of those go through a hub and in the end it's one plug into my computer when i'm at home. When i'm on the road, I don't carry an extra keyboard, chargers, etc with me - i don't need them.

 

Yep, we're different. Part of it of course is that a laptop has the keyboard and mouse built in. My printer is on my wireless hub.

I don't know about your iPhone, but mine came with a little power adapter with a USB port and nice quick entry/exit cradle for the iPhone. I stick the thing in there for charging. Every once in a while I pull the USB cable from the power adapter and plug it into the laptop to synchronize and backup the iPhone. Also since the iPhone serves perfectly well as an iPod, I don't have three iPods like you do. (You keep them all plugged in all the time?)

As for my thumb drive, that certainly doesn't reside permanently in a port. It is in and back out again in around 10 to 30 seconds, depending on what I'm copying.

Currently the most frequent use of my ports on my laptop is to plug in a hard drive for backups. Once I get my 1 TB Time Capsule, even that will be done wirelessly. I will also use it as auxiliary storage for stuff I only need at home.

The second most frequent use of the USB port is my camera, which again is a transient and relatively infrequent visitor to the port.

You have a desktop machine. If I had to keep all that stuff plugged into my portable, it wouldn't be portable, now would it?

By the way, my laptop is my main computer. Since I started using computers more than 30 years ago, I'm quite happy with what would have been a mega-mondo-supercomputer back then, and it only weighs three pounds.