Digital Trends

Apple MacBook Air (80GB) March 4th, 2008 | by Josh Norem

Use and Testing

Unlike most notebooks that arrive in a decent-sized box, the Air comes in a tiny box that is about the size of a ream of printer paper. We opened the box and pulled the Air out and were simply amazed by how thin it is. That “manila envelope” marketing bit is no joke – it’s incredible how thin and light it feels when you are holding it.

We pulled out our stopwatch and booted to the desktop. Even though the unit ships with a 4,200rpm hard drive, which is the slowest rotational velocity available for hard drives, it booted to the Leopard desktop in 58 seconds, which is a bit faster than what we typically see on a Vista machine.

Once we had arrived at the desktop, we were pleased by the lack of icons on the desktop that we’re so used to seeing on PCs. While this is probably nothing new to long-time Mac users, it is something that is rarely experienced in the world of pre-built PCs, as many of you are probably aware. Only on super high-end gaming PCs can you get a clean install of the OS, which is a pity.

For standard desktop work the Air seemed plenty fast; in fact it felt a lot faster than what we typically see on a PC. Our personal notebook has 1.5GB of RAM, Windows XP and a 7,200rpm notebook drive, yet the Air “felt” faster opening programs, switching from one program to another, and never hung or had us waiting more than a few seconds. Just opening iTunes takes just a few seconds, which is twice as fast as on our burly gaming desktop PC. Suffice to say the Air is certainly fast enough for daily tasks. Though we didn’t run any official benchmarks on it, we never felt that it was slow or unresponsive. Gamers need-not-apply here though. Don’t even think the thought of gaming and the MacBook Air in the same sentence.

Battery Life

The MacBook Air’s battery has sparked controversy because it’s not removable, which is a first for notebooks. Though it has few short-term consequences, most consumers would certainly not be happy having to ship the notebook to Apple to swap out the battery should it malfunction or die. You’ll note this same controversy has followed the iPod and iPhone for some time now. Though we’d prefer a removable battery, it’s difficult to say how annoying this would be in the long run as it’s difficult to predict the battery’s life span. 

Apple has claimed the battery life of the Air is five hours. Indeed, when you fully charge the battery and set the countdown timer to show remaining time, it says exactly five hours. As you begin using the Air though, that number begins to fluctuate wildly according to the demands being placed on the system. We tested battery life by simply using the Air for standard desktop tasks and web surfing and were able to go for three hours and five minutes. Obviously, this is far short of five hours, but our experience has taught us that manufacturer’s claims are always wildly off the mark, and are probably obtained by letting the notebook idle at the desktop with WiFi disabled, screen dark, etc.

Image Courtesy of Apple