Hands on with the 11.6" Macbook Air

It’s been a great few days for Apple Fans. So far we’ve seen iLife 11 and a little Teaser of Mac OS X 10.7 or Lion for those in the know! Also announced was the new Macbook Air Duo. A 13″ and an 11.6″ version. We managed to get some play time with the new MacBook Air 11.6’’. There’s 2 models available off the shelf. Both have 1.4ghz Core2Duo processors (1.6ghz available online as an optional upgrade). The main difference between the 2 models is the available storage. Your options are 64gb and 128gb. The model we managed to get to play with was the 64GB model. This little baby (and I mean baby) is soo light and tidy in the hands and apart from when I opened it the back pinched my hand about, em, 5 times, it’s just a sight to behold. We didn’t care much for the previous models as we thought for there spec it was not worth near 2K!!

When you open the box you are first greeted with the MacBook Air, its power supply and a nice little USB Key, which is actually the reinstall disks! It’s in a Key form because the MacBook Air has no CD/DVD drive.

First off this is one of Apples smallest notebooks and don’t be put off by its small size because one this it’s not lacking in is function! Its got good specs for a system its size! Apart from the 1.4ghz processor mentioned above, there’s 2gb of RAM (upgradeable to 4gb online). The storage (either 64gb or 128gb) is flash storage, yep, no hard drives in sight!! This is one of the reasons it’s soo speedy! No spinning drives to slow you down! Also included is a Nvidia 320m Graphics chip with 256mb of ram.

iLife ’11 on this little beauty, ran like a dream even when using Garage Band and iMovie the system is very quick. This is alot down to the flash memory! We must admit that 64GB is not alot of storage, but before you diss its memory, this is not intended to replace a computer, but more compliment a more power machine that maybe has greater storage capicity. it’s a great system it is Apples answer to a “netbook” (though Apple would never officially call it that), it can properly out preform most netbooks out there!

It turns on in less then 13 seconds and off in less then 2. This instant on and off is just amazing and we very surprised at its speed! I mean you would think the the specs is low when you read them on paper, but the flash storage makes all the difference. It’s Running Snow Leopard smooth as silk! It’s also incredibly light at 1.06kg /2.3lbs (the 11.6’’ model) so you wont be screwed over going on a flight for excess baggage charges! (and we’re not naming any Airline in particular here, but you know who you are!).

The MacBook air is all about portability, It’s got the portability of the ipad with a full Mac OS X and it’s barely 1lb heavier! Don’t forget you also get a full multi-touch trackpad, (which previous Air’s didn’t have, but all the most recent Macbooks have!) and Of course the webcam, or as it’s now known, the Facetime Camera!

Apple have also been very clever in pricing the Macbook Air. The entry model kicks in at 999 Euro (that’s for the model tested above) We think the reason behind this is that high End iPad is 899 so for 100 quid extra you can have a Full Mac OS and it can Run Flash

So if we were given a choice between the top end iPad model or the entry level MacBook Air I would pick the MacBook Air without even thinking about it!

As mentioned above the new MacBook Air comes in a total of 4 different flavors. Two 11.6’’ models, one with a 64GB or 128GB flash storage and processors up to 1.6ghz or 13’’ model, with 128GB or 256GB storage, Intel Core2Due up to 2.1Ghz

The 2010 MacBook Air, in a nutshell, is small, light and powerful little system which will be great for collage, traveling or for the business person and runs full Mac OS X and capable of running anything you can put on it .

Pop into any Compu b Store nation wide to have some hands on time yourselves with this amazing little machine!