The apple of your eye
Gadget: Apple MacBook Air
Price range: $2,500 - $4,000
Thumbs up: aesthetics
Thumbs down: lack of optical drive
Rating: ***
What it is:
The world's thinnest notebook with a slick design and a few new Apple innovations.
Why you need it:
It is an easy-to-use, compact, great looking laptop which happens to be perfectly suited to travelling. Although the MacBook Air is neither the fastest nor the most powerful machine on the market and has no optical drive, the 80GB hard drive and 1.6 (or optional 1.8) Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor is more than capable of fulfilling the IT needs of brokers - especially where travel is concerned. Plus the MBA comes with some fantastic software such as Keynote which allows the user to create professional presentations, and i-book in i-photo which allows the user to create books, calendars and pamphlets. Plus environmental advocates will be happy to learn that the MBA is recyclable and has environmentally friendly back-light settings.
Key features:
* 13.3-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display with 1280x800 resolution
*1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB L2 cache
What's particularly cool about it:
Apart from the fact that it puts every other laptop to shame with its slender physique, the MBA is also incredibly sturdy, has an impressive multi-touch gesture function (which allows a user to move, zoom, flip, rotate, scroll and flick through software applications and web pages with the use of three easy hand gestures) and comes with a whole bundle of impressive, professional and easy to use software.
What it will cost you:
The 13-inch 1.6GHz MacBook Air retails at $2,499.00.
Where you can get it:
At all Apple stores, online from http://www.mac-australia.com and by calling 133622.
Testing out the MacBook Air
"It is the laptop equivalent of a supermodel - thin and good looking. Aesthetically Apple has created yet another sleek, funky, stylish product with a distinct 'Apple' feel." says AB's Agnes Gajewska who gives her opinion after taking the MacBook for a test drive:
The MacBook comes with an impressive 13.3 inch screen, wide track pad, fully sized keyboard, camera, hidden magnetic ports and wireless technology making it a tight little unit.
It also comes with the multi-touch gesture function (you can turn pages using hand gestures on the track pad) which is fun, easy to use and time saving. Another useful feature is the MacBook's auto-backing ability, by which information is wirelessly sent to an external hard drive.
While its memory capacity does not have the horsepower of many competitor laptops, its 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2GB of memory and an 80GB hard drive is perfectly sufficient to handle almost all tasks with ease and allows for the laptop to be incredibly compact and light.
My concern however, lies in the lack of optical drive, despite Apple re-assuring me that they will go the way of floppy disk drives. The MacBook makes up for this by being able to wirelessly borrow the optical drive of another computer; however this is only practical if a second computer is available. (A user can also purchase an external drive).
Finally there's the issue of the price. Although this is rumoured to drop as the MacBook becomes more popular, it is steep when compared with the rest of the market.
