The 2010 Macbook Air. I’ve had my 13″ MBA for a few months now, but when I first got it there were a few unanticipated surprises that made it an even more worthwhile upgrade. I replaced my 2008 Macbook pro, which had a faster processor and a 7200rpm 500gb harddrive, but despite this I haven’t looked back. Its an upgrade which brings a much faster user experience, a smaller & lighter package, and 3x longer battery life, which by any standards is impressive for a next generation of computer.

Before I got the Air, I was using my Macbook 30% less because the iPad can do a lot of the same things in a much smaller package. With the 1cm Air, it’s the iPad which takes a back seat again, an indication of how mobile our computing lives have become. It’s all about portability. Anyway, without further ado, here are a few pleasant surprises of the new Air:

  • No Sleep light to prevent Sleep!

The air has no pulsating sleep light like the older Macbooks and powerbooks which I was used to, so no having to stick bits of paper over the ‘sleep’ light before you go to bed to make sure you can sleep.

  • Speaker punch

The speakers are significantly better quality and louder than my 3x bigger Macbook pro!

  • Silence is golden

Naturally one of the Macbook Air’s main advantages is it’s fast, quiet, and low energy SSD. But not until you sit in a completely silent room to get on with some creative work do you really appreciate how amazing real computing silence is. I should add, that is until you do something like some heavy photoshopping at which point you might be shocked by just how powerful and loud the fan is! Who said no moving parts…?

  • Squeeze on the plane

Finally, a computer with desktop power and high resolution (1440×900) that really fits comfortably between your economy seat and the one in front. Perfect.

  • Virtual Memory with SSD

I was trying to decide whether to fork out another $X00 for 4gb of memory in the apple store, when I decided to do a quick test. Why would you want more memory? When you run out of wired memory of course. And what happens then? Your computer starts using virtual swap memory located on the… oh god… hard drive. Hence all manner of slowness and doom. But wait a minute, if your hard drive is 3x faster, what effect does that really have on a memory swamped system? Turns out the Macbook Air  SSD has another hidden advantage. When you’re out of memory, your machine will perform much much faster than a computer with a traditional HD which is out of memory, because it is using your SSD instead of a slow and fragmented traditional HD. My quick tests proved conclusive, and although many would argue 2gb wired memory is not enough by todays standards, I am very satisfied with performance.

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