Experiences owning both the 11.6" and 13.3" -- Impressions and Review

[Sounds Good]

Don't count on TSA employees knowing that at the airports!

Exactly what I was thinking...

 

[rrl]

When comparing size and weight, don't forget about torque. Most of us pick up laptops near an edge. A larger footprint plus more mass can become a significant difference, especially when you pick up an MBA near a thin edge.

torque ~= distance x force

 

[dmelgar]

When comparing size and weight, don't forget about torque. Most of us pick up laptops near an edge. A larger footprint plus more mass can become a significant difference, especially when you pick up an MBA near a thin edge.

torque ~= distance x force

Because of that, my 11"MBA feels much stronger than my wifes 15" cheap plastic Lenovo w510 (work machine). Cant pick up that thing by a corner and hope that flimsy plastic can lift the lead weight laptop.

 

[tim100]

+1 13 and 15 are too close in screen size. the 13 was a duplicate of my main machine.

putting macbook pro 15 and macbook air 13 side by side its not a huge difference in screen space. in my opinion in order to see a difference in screen size you need to jump up more than 2 in, like putting a 17 next to a 13.

 

[randomtask]

So, I bought a Macbook Air 11" 1.6ghz/4gb yesterday and it arrived today via courier.

First the positives;
- It makes absolutely no noise, at all, now that coolbook is installed. Even after an hour of 70% cpu use the fan remains under 2000 rpm.
- It's very very light, the screen isn't so small to be a problem. I bought it for portability mostly.
- It is powerful enough for everything I do.

The speed of booting/returning from sleep advertising was complete hyperbole however. I put it side by side with my Macbook 2,1 (with intel 160gb ssd, 4gb ram, superdrive removed) and they boot at the same speed (10s). I have a video of them booting side by side and it's identical. The return from lid down to up is identical to the old macbook w/ intel ssd, and returning from sleep is the same.

In conclusion, it seems a great laptop and I am glad I bought it. However, the adverts are simply dishonest with regard to the improvement. If you want macbook air performance - just buy an SSD!

 

[gwsat]

putting macbook pro 15 and macbook air 13 side by side its not a huge difference in screen space. in my opinion in order to see a difference in screen size you need to jump up more than 2 in, like putting a 17 next to a 13.

It is true that the difference in screen real estate between the 15 inch MBP and the 13 inch MBA is not huge. The big difference in the two lies in weight and thickness. The 15 inch MBP weighs 5.6 pounds, which is nearly twice as much as the MBA's 2.9 pounds. At .95 inches, the MBP is, on average, more than twice as thick as the MBA, whose thickness varies from .11 to .68 of an inch.

 

[Cerano]

So, I bought a Macbook Air 11" 1.6ghz/4gb yesterday and it arrived today via courier.

First the positives;
- It makes absolutely no noise, at all, now that coolbook is installed. Even after an hour of 70% cpu use the fan remains under 2000 rpm.
- It's very very light, the screen isn't so small to be a problem. I bought it for portability mostly.
- It is powerful enough for everything I do.

The speed of booting/returning from sleep advertising was complete hyperbole however. I put it side by side with my Macbook 2,1 (with intel 160gb ssd, 4gb ram, superdrive removed) and they boot at the same speed (10s). I have a video of them booting side by side and it's identical. The return from lid down to up is identical to the old macbook w/ intel ssd, and returning from sleep is the same.

In conclusion, it seems a great laptop and I am glad I bought it. However, the adverts are simply dishonest with regard to the improvement. If you want macbook air performance - just buy an SSD!

that is misleading mate.

not all ssds are equal. furthermore, the MBA SSD has more parallelism than most SSDs allowing very high sequential read/write speeds that are greater than X-25Vs and Ms. The OSX and controller are optimised too so simply dropping an SSD in to other macbooks wont have that great an improvement

 

[randomtask]

that is misleading mate.

not all ssds are equal. furthermore, the MBA SSD has more parallelism than most SSDs allowing very high sequential read/write speeds that are greater than X-25Vs and Ms. The OSX and controller are optimised too so simply dropping an SSD in to other macbooks wont have that great an improvement

How is it misleading?

What I did was simply dropping an SSD in an old macbook 2,1. Nothing else.
It performs on par with my macbook air ssd in every meaningful way..

Yes the benchmarks are better on the air SSD, but the real world difference is zero.