MacBook Air Complaints Visited

1. Internal battery

There are at least two facets to this complaint: replacing an aging battery and that of swapping out a dead battery. For the former, it turns out that it takes minutes to replace. For the latter, so what? I've owned six laptops so far and I've never felt compelled to purchase a second battery for any of them. For extended trips I am either in a car (with a cigarette lighter to plug into) or an airplane (also with power plugs).


2. The display resolution is too low

I would guess that some facet of the thinness of the laptop (or perhaps its just the price point) required that they adopt the resolution they went with, which I believe is around 116 dpi. That's plenty high. Stop complaining.


3. No optical drive

I bet you complained when Apple retired the 3.5" floppy drive, too. Anyway, I only rarely use the optical drive in my laptop, and I can always toss the external drive in my backpack.


4. Cost too much

The costs of miniaturization are not linear. If you want to take advantage of the best the market has to offer in terms of price-to-performance, get a desktop. Put some straps on it. Hoist it onto your back. Don't forget the LCD, keyboard and mouse, as well. Given the portability of the Air, the price is acceptable.


5. Footprint is too large

Mass is more of the issue than total volume. Obviously volume is important, but not as important as weight. To me, anyway. I wouldn't find a 10" screen very useful. There might be some value to this point, if there were a common style of backpack that would fit a 10" laptop comfortably, but not a 13" laptop. As it is, I'm either carrying only things that will fit in my pockets, or I have a backpack. A 10" laptop would not be of any benefit.


6. Mono speaker

Holy cow. And it doesn't have a toaster, either.