After comparing and looking at Sony VIAO TT and Z series, Dell Adamo, HP Voodoo Envy 133 and Lenovo X301, I ended up getting my dad this Macbook Air 1.86 with the 128GB ssd.
He travels alot for his business, so weight and portability are # 1 for him. Power (In his case, powerful enough to easily handle web browsing, word processing, a somewhat large music library, emailing, basic tasks, without it feeling overwhelmed if he does all of this at once. He's no gamer or video editor or anything similar to that) and comfort (big enough screen and keyboard in a still portable package) were tied at # 2. He doesn't need an excessive amount of power, or 20 devices all connected at once thru USB ports. And as he put it, in the 2 years he's had his sony laptop, he's only used the cd-rom a couple times, so using "remote-disc" or an external drive would not be a deal breaker for him.
After pricing different, similar laptops with similar specs, I was a little surprised to find that the Macbook Air turned out to be sometimes of equal price, and sometimes a better value than some. It was the compromise (they all have some sort of compromise) of power and portability that I found best fits his needs.
While the speed of the processor of top of the line Macbook Air is of "only" 1.86Ghz (tho it's faster than those offered by comparable hp's, dell, lenovo and some of the sonys I looked at), some users are claiming that their Macbook Air's with the 128GB ssd actually feels "speedier" than their Macbooks or Macbooks Pro.
I found an article that proves them right. pcadvisor.co.uk ran some benchmarks on the Air and found that on
certain (basic and common) tasks, the Air was faster than the Macbook and Macbook Pro (Ex. boot up time is quicker, opening Photoshop was twice as fast on Air than on Pro). Now this doesn't mean Air is a faster machine than Macbook or Macbook Pro overall, as the Air would certainly take way more time to do other tasks (video editing, etc), but it gives an idea of how usable the machine can be.
Here's a link to it :
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?reviewid=107770&pn=3
When I saw today that the Rev B refurbs became available, I bought one for him right away. The $2,149 price is very competitive, and when compared to what some of the competition has to offer, it even becomes a great deal. The Air suddenly became all that more attractive.
