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.
