[jogi]

So I've pulled the trigger and sold my 1 year old Macbook Air 1.6 GHz on Ebay.

Why? There were a number of reasons that made me unhappy with the laptop:

1. The laptop was constantly overheating. Its funny how Steve Jobs was saying that its a small laptop with no compromises in Keyboard, screen, processor speed, etc compared to other ultraportables. During my trips to warmer that UK countries (Greece, Italy, India) I could not use the laptop for more than 30 minutes without overheating. I mean, Skyping was out of the question, browsing Youtube, watching a 720p movie...

2. The hard drive was far too small and not upgradable. I've bought an external hard drive to cope with the small size, but it was too big of a hassle having to manage 2 iPhoto libraries (one cut down on the Air and the full one on the hard drive), not installing all the applications I wanted as they would fill up the small disk space, not downloading email attachments for the same reason... Plus, seeing the 500gb 2.5" drives made me luster for that much capacity on my laptop, as I would not need an external drive any more...

3. The processor and disk were far too slow: I know its not meant to be for any serious work, but I got really annoyed with all the beach-balling in Safari when opening too many windows at the same time, not being able to encode a video in reasonable time to upload to my iPhone, stuttering in iPhoto while browsing my photo collection...

On the other had, I've never missed the DVD drive, as I rarely used it. Same for the ethernet connection. I loved the small size and light weight, as I could easily cary it everywhere.

But I could not live with the above compromises.

So I went on and bought an entry level MBP Unibody, swapped the hard drive with my external WD passport 320gb, and upped the memory to 4gb. Even though the laptop is slightly bigger and twice as heavy it is a proper laptop. Works like a breeze, is upgradable, is running substantially cooler than the Air and has the same battery life. Sure, I could live with a slower processor, but not one that throttles back to 800MHz (!!!) when doing anything processor intensive...

[amazing]

Congrats on the switch!

Of course, all your reasons for switching show that you weren't the "ideal light-use" laptop user that would value the MBA, so the real question remains as to why you tried to shoe-horn yourself into the MBA to begin with? In other words, was it an impulse buy, sort of like a Vegas wedding, leading inevitably to a Vegas divorce?

[jogi]

Depends how you define light use. All I wanted was to Skype - video call, watch youtube videos, use iPhoto without problems and browse the internet. Problem is that it couldn't handle those activities properly, at least when in a warm climate, which I've been quite frequently. I've never expected it to be my work laptop; got another one for this, which is actually slower than the Air (HP 12inch, 1.2 GHZ Ultra Low Voltage, 2 GB Ram, 60 GB HD) and it worked faster than the Air in the majority of cases... :S

I think it was a bit of an impulse buy, more due to it was a first gen product and less that its not a capable machine. I think the Air will be brilliant in the third iteration, when they manage to squeeze a 2GHz processor that can work at 2GHz and a spacious 256GB SSD drive.

[Wiskedjak]

There's nothing from what you descibed (Skype - video call, watch youtube videos, use iPhoto without problems and browse the internet) that the MBA shouldn't have been able to handle, even in warm climates. In fact, an MBP is serious overkill for those needs; I use my MB to do more than what you're describing without any problems.

[jogi]

The reason I did not buy the MB was the poor screen quality. Blacks are not blacks but grey and did not want to compromise and switch laptops in a year again

[slugslugslug]

That's a reasonable argument against the MB, if you notice that sort of thing. You might be a wee bit disappointed to hear that reviews of the 2nd MacBook Air iteration said it pretty much solved the heat and CPU-speed problems. On the other hand, HD capacity is still a significant disadvantage.

[jogi]

Originally Posted by slugslugslug 

That's a reasonable argument against the MB, if you notice that sort of thing. You might be a wee bit disappointed to hear that reviews of the 2nd MacBook Air iteration said it pretty much solved the heat and CPU-speed problems. On the other hand, HD capacity is still a significant disadvantage.

That seems to be true.. I've done some research before getting the MBP and indeed the Air seems to have solved the heat issues; however it still appears to be a throwaway computer, as it has 2 GB, non upgradable ram and a non-replaceable hard drive. Maybe more now than before, as it has the same memory size as the original.


Having gone from a Windows laptop (Vaio) to a second gen MBP 2.16GHZ to a MBA and then back to an MBP, I can definitely say that the MBP is the machine for me. I was never dissatisfied with the second gen MBP and the Unibody is a good refinement of the original, so definitely recommended