My New Toy! MacBook Air 2001 (Thunderbolt)!

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Just arrived today (4th August 2011)! I am an exciting boy! Have been playing with it none stop for over 9 hours… 🙂

Ok…not playing…working actually…

Here’s some photos of the unwrapping of my toy…

(to be update later…)

Screen / Display

My first impression…not that impressive. It is not ISP display, so colour and contrast shifted when you view at different angle. this is quite annoying especially when you are doing photo editing. Since I am quite a lot into photography, so the screen actually disappointed me.

MBA is using glossy screen on the display. While the colour is really rich and shinny, it is actually very poor for actual production work, especially when you have light at your back or nearly a window.

The good thing about this glossy display is that you can use it as a mirror if you want to see how handsome or beautiful you are…Just adjust your eyes to focus on different plan on the display… 😛

Continue writing as of 14th August 2011…

Price? I paid RM3.8k for the 13″ 2011 MBA. Not really cheap for a notebook (you can get Dell notebook at RM2k nowadays), but not very expensive as well (Sony high end notebook can cost more than RM5k, or an Apple MBP can cost you over RM4k easily). My initial budget was just RM3k, and I was actually targeting the 11″ MBA at RM2.9k, but then after reading reviews and discussions on forums, and most importantly my wife’s speaking “Get the 13″, since you always like bigger monitor”, so the 13″ that’s it. No regret, and I really like bigger screen. The MBA is not just for internet browsing, so a bigger monitor does helps.

Weight and Size

The MBA isn’t really that light. Yes, it is lighter than most other notebook in the market, but don’t get fooled by the marketing advertisement that MBA is as light as feather. My 13″ MBA isn’t exactly that small too, as at 13″, it is like holding a F4 folder.

What I like the MBA is the cool one piece aluminum cast out body (two pieces, one for monitor, one for body). Really elegant!

Performance

In terms of performance, MBA is really fast! I can start using my computer in 5 seconds after starting it. Yes, it is that fast! Shutting down takes less than 3 seconds. That should be mainly due to the new Intel i5 sandy bridge design and SSD hardisk.

Running Adobe Lightroom is fast on MBA too. It reads and displays photos smoothly on the screen. However, I am not going to use my MBA for photo processing or storage, as I only have 128GB SSD hardisk on my MBA. It is already less than 80GB space now. To keep my photos in the MBA, it will run out of space in no time.

There is another nice feature of the MBA, which is the backlight keyboard. I prefer to OFF it during daytime, and will only ON it when needed, to save battery.

Cables / Connections

Apple is really a frustrated company as they use different connection for different notebooks. My old Macbook white 2006 uses the standard displayport, while this new MBA uses mini displayport. I bought the mini displayport to VGA adapter together with my MBA, that’s essential as I need to connect the MBA to LCD projector in meeting presentation. I tend to lost things…don’t like to bring extra items with me but there is no other option as mini displayport is not a commonly support connection on any LCD projector that I have seen.

I tried connecting my 21.5″ Viewsonic LCD monitor to my MBA via the mini displayport to VGA adapter, and I must say that the colour is DULL. I am not sure if it is because of the poor monitor or the poor quality signal transmission using VGA cable. My PC connecting to the same monitor using DVI cable is able to produce a much vibrant colour.

MBA is capable of connecting to an external monitor and still able to deliver upto maximum 2560 x 1600 px resolution! That’s the largest resolution that you can find in the market now for a 30″ monitor. It is quite a joy connecting to an external monitor and using the MBA as like an CPU. I am going to get an external monitor for it!

Battery Performance

Apple claims 7 hours run, while I didn’t really count…but I do have more than 5 hours of battery power on my MBA without problem. That is impressive I must say. Good enough for a whole day use without having to bring a power supply all the time.  If I can sit inside Starbuck for a day, I won’t have to worry about running out of power as well. If you are on your computer for over 7 hours a day…you should probably go get rest instead of powering your notebook up and continue working…or surfing…

Conclusion

After a week of using my MBA, I must say that I like it quite a lot! It is sleek, cool, fast, thin, light and a really great product to easily bring around and use! It is ashamed why other company can’t make similar cool product like Apple and sell at similar price range. Mac OS X Lion is cool too! Better than the 10.4 version that I have on my Macbook (white 2006). I am still forcing myself to learn and like Mac OS, and am still learning. I try not to return to Windows for my daily work, hopefully I can get along well with the Apple system.

If you are a PC guy…be prepared to spend lots of time to get yourself familiar with Mac OS X. On the physical and design part, you will not regret.