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The MacBook Air has no clothes

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Re: The MacBook Air has no clothes

#21

Post by lanaer »

demallien wrote: post #8

Yeah, talk about an inflammatory title... Now, if he had said that "The MacBook Air Is Wearing Those Awful Low Slung Jeans That I Hate", rather than claiming that it is actually naked, maybe he would have a point. Jason, maaaate, let me explain something to you: with your needs, the MacBook Air is not a good choice. Apple makes a machine for you, it's called a MacBook Pro. Three types of spaghetti sauce and all that…

An MBA with the SSD drive also seems like it would perform well for him. But then, the MBP should be cheaper.

Re: The MacBook Air has no clothes

#22

Post by trevelyan »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #9
martey wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The processor is the MacBook Air is different (lower voltage, lower clock speed, lower performance). Add in a slower hard drive (only 4200 RPM) and the difference in performance between it and your MacBook Pro is no surprise.

Yes. It's the same with every portable device: Customers complain if the thing weighs too much, they complain if the thing runs too slowly, and they complain if the battery life is too short. Unfortunately, since it is nigh-impossible to improve all three of these factors at once without fundamentally improving battery technology [1] -- a glacially slow process compared to Moore's Law -- to build a portable device is…

One word: Fujitsu.

Just bought one of their S6410s. 13-inch screen ultralight with good performance and great battery life. Don't know if the machines are available in the US yet, but the laptop rocks. Small enough you can use it on a plane with the screen fully open, or throw it in a knapsack. Large enough to be my main computer, although I like to browse the web with F11.

My gripe with the Mac is that it's too expensive for what you get. I've never been inclined to put a laptop in a manilla envelope though, so I'd guess I'm not their market. Only problem with Fujitsu is that the company seems actively disinterested in selling their products (took ages to find a local reseller) and the company has literally nothing in the way of Linux support, not even "unofficial" drivers. They also do that awful "backup as a partition" that screws up when you repartition the hard drive to do things like install useful software.

Ubuntu is up and running now though, and it's great.

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