Ars says you’re stupid to spend the extra cash to get a SSD MacBook Air
And…I’ll start this off by saying I don’t give a flying rats ass about benchmarks. As someone who has both MacBook Airs (don’t worry, the one we’re giving away is not opened), I can tell you that for most things, it’s the fastest Mac experience I’ve had. Let me introduce you to the Mac stable I own:
- MacBook Air 1.8GHz, SSD, 2GB RAM
- MacBook Air 1.6GHz, 80GB HD, 2GB RAM
- 24" iMac 2.8GHz, 4GB RAM
- (2) 20" iMacs, 2.4GHz, 2GB RAM
- (2) 15" MacBook Pros, 2.33GHz, 3GB RAM
- 15" MacBook Pro, 2.16GHz, 2GB RAM
- Powerbook 17", 2GB RAM (forget CPU speed, PowerPC)
- MacMini 2.0GHz, 2GB RAM
- G5, dual 2.7GHz, 4GB RAM. (PowerPC)
That’s all I can remember off the top of my head, and I’ll put this out there right now…The SSD Macbook Air launches most applications faster than anyone of those computers. I’m not talking about Final Cut necessarily, I’m talking about iChat, Safari, Firefox, iTunes, etc. Will you be recording Mariah Carey on your 1.8GHz MacBook Air with one USB port? I highly doubt it, but that’s not the point. The point is that the SSD is certainly worth it as long as you can afford it. In fact, I think a whole lot of people sprung for the SSD model that wouldn’t have, or didn’t plan to have bought one. That’s a good thing. Enjoy your SSD MacBook Air and don’t let a benchmark test make you upset you dropped a little more coin on something. The SSD drive, in my opinion, certainly makes up for the slow processor on the MacBook Air, and puts it on par with it’s brother, the MacBook Pro, in most normal usage. I’m not saying its the fastest Mac by any means, I’m just saying from real world usage, it’s pretty damn fast. Screw the benchmarks. Oh, battery life! Got around 4 hours last night managing the site, ordering from Amazon, playing iTunes music, and random madness. Not scientific, but I certainly wasn’t by a power supply and unless Daylight Savings hit twice and my clocks rolled back, it was a good 4 hours of battery life.
The Macbook might not be hot, the Macbook Air not either, the Ocean – jump aboard, but the Boy Genuis Report… THAT’s HOT
Would be nice and light to carry around for school. I would definately want one.
BGR,
Totally Agree with the SSD evaul. I tottered back and forth on which to get, and after having the SSD for a week I fully agree thats its a lot snappier then my current gen MBP.
To the Flame Warriors:
Enjoy your PC’s, fight your board wars, buy your zunes, rave about your dells and lenovos and their features. Please keep buying MS software, and support Bill Gates, Lord knows he needs the cash. Just don’t think that by stating how great your pc is will change that fact that Vista is bloated pile of poo, or that there is a PC OEM out there that has a remote idea of style other then Sony.
When you want something that works, that is a pleasure to use, and you can give to your non-technical spouse to use without being barraged with a million questions. Buy an Apple, they make using a computer fun again. O, and with Leopard they are 100% Unix, which is nice ppl with a nix background.
Also,
BG – I’m getting same type of battery life, and given that it takes about 5 to 10 cycles before you break in the battery I have no doubt this little guy will get 5 hours.
I always laugh at the comments that say ” Apples are so overpriced for four hundred bucks I can get a Windows computer that does the same thing. You guys are stupid!” No I am very intelligent – I have a very good job that lets me buy the things I like in life. Your stupid obviously because you have a bad job and you can only afford a 400 dollar computer. You don’t even have the decency to let a blogger write about what he wants to. Fo God sakes it is his blog. Get your own blog you moron. Wow look at me stooping to your level! Guess I am just a little smarter than you but my money makes up for it.