A similar concern may be expressed by those upgrading who have also learned that, although an adapter is available for older MagSafe power adapters, the adapter for this version of Mac is not directly compatible with the older releases.Īlthough we haven’t done any timed testing of battery life, we can confirm that the MBA, in normal surfing and e-mail patterns, easily bypasses the six hour mark and, as well, sound quality is among the best we have heard from any Ultra with stereo speakers well hidden in the keyboard.
As well, migrating a system to a larger SSD after the fact would be like pulling teeth given the proprietary nature of OS X.Īs much as the 1440×900 HD resolution, 2 x USB 3.0 ports, Thunderbolt, SD card slot, MagSafe 2, and a free upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion on release are huge benefits, I am wondering how I am going to be connecting this to my big screen via HDMI as there is no port present, something that I definitely found a great deal of use in with my Ultras. If you want 8GB RAM, vice 4GB, it is integrated into the board to keep the units size very small and there is no upgrading after the fact. With this came something many never bargain for and that is that the MBA is, for the most part, upgradeable only at the time of purchase. With our initial order, definite pluses were the fact that it took only ten days to arrive from China with free shipping and there were plenty of configurations available when deciding on exactly what we needed. While I still stand by the fact that pound for pound, the Intel Ultra may be more affordable, the MacBook Air displays a number of superior qualities and it’s starting prices of $999 and $1199 comes very close to that of many Ultra buys. Things change though and there were just too many things that attracted me to this release to keep me away any longer. If last month, someone had told me that I would be compiling a ten page report of the MacBook Air on my MacBook Air while using OS X Lion, I would have told them they were dreaming.