Next week, the Macbook Air finally goes on sale, and starting at $1,799 for an 80-gigabyte hard drive and $3,100 for a solid state drive 64-gigabyte machine, it's not cheap. So is the uber-thin, aluminum-clad laptop worth the price? According to several top-tier tech critics, the answer is a resounding no.
As Don Reisinger summarized at the blog Crave, "The MacBook Air is nothing more than a toy that has no promise and will flounder in stores." Walter S. Mossberg at the "Wall Street Journal" laments the Air's single USB port and lack of a DVD player, removable battery, and ethernet jack, not to mention its lower-than-predicted battery life. Such omissions, as Steven Levy of "Newsweek" points out, are "troubling--especially to someone in a down-turning economy deciding whether to spend a premium sum for a computer with subpremium storage." At his ComputerWorld blog, Seth Weintraub additionally lists 10 reasons to hold off on buying the Air, including the sure-to-drop price, and the machine's lack of expandability.
On a more positive note, Edward C. Baig of USA Today says the Air is a "yummy machine for people who spend a lot of time traveling."
Read more review round-ups at MacRumors.com, as well as musician John Mayer's take on the laptop at his personal blog.
in short, the MacBook Air is not for everyone.