5 ms·

Life with the MacBook Air

11 points by pius 19y ago

Perhaps it's due to the somewhat limited graphics capabilities of the MBA -- mostly due to its lack of a dedicated graphics card -- but it does, on occasion, have a bit of trouble with quick screen refresh and occasionally just gets bogged down completely. And yes, when it does this, you are treated to the spinning beachball show for several seconds until things get going again. I'm looking forward to the 2nd or 3rd revision when the performance issues are resolved.

pius 19y ago
Perhaps it's due to the somewhat limited graphics capabilities of the MBA -- mostly due to its lack of a dedicated graphics card -- but it does, on occasion, have a bit of trouble with quick screen refresh and occasionally just gets bogged down completely. And yes, when it does this, you are treated to the spinning beachball show for several seconds until things get going again. I'm looking forward to the 2nd or 3rd revision when the performance issues are resolved.
- notauser 19y ago
  I'm waiting for a 9" ASUS Eee instead. Dirt cheap so it won't matter when the TSA drops it (my PowerBook got a nice dent the corner), small enough to unfold in economy seats, and all the hardware works with Linux out of the box :)
  - wallflower 19y ago
    I couldn't wait for a 9" Asus EEE, so I ebay'd the 8" 8g one. I love it. It's the size and heft of a hardback book - you can literally run out the door and grab it. Not having to worry that much about shock damage and defragmentation makes the limited SD-only storage worth it. Girls think it's cute too (sometimes it's good to be different - MacBooks are as vanilla as some guy's default personalities)
    - pius 19y ago
      Cool, how's the performance? What do you use it for?
      - wallflower 19y ago
        1) Learning to code Ruby on Rails 2) A coffee shop companion 3) 1 and 2 The performance isn't great - about that of a 4 to 5-yr old low-end notebook, not a pressing issue as long as I don't care about it / learn to breathe. Occasionally I wonder what the SD disk is doing thrashing (even though I can't hear it - no moving parts -see the little blinking LED). I'm not doing anything processor-intensive just hacking/googling my way around the unfamiliar neighborhood of Ruby on Rails. As a distraction, YouTube videos play fine. I have Windows XP installed (so I can tunnel into the corporate VPN) - the Ubuntu should perform for coding much, much better.
PStamatiou 19y ago
see also: http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/03/20/review-macbook-air http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/03/20/review-macbook-air :-)

11 points by pius 19y ago

pius 19y ago

notauser 19y ago
I'm waiting for a 9" ASUS Eee instead. Dirt cheap so it won't matter when the TSA drops it (my PowerBook got a nice dent the corner), small enough to unfold in economy seats, and all the hardware works with Linux out of the box :)
- wallflower 19y ago
  I couldn't wait for a 9" Asus EEE, so I ebay'd the 8" 8g one. I love it. It's the size and heft of a hardback book - you can literally run out the door and grab it. Not having to worry that much about shock damage and defragmentation makes the limited SD-only storage worth it. Girls think it's cute too (sometimes it's good to be different - MacBooks are as vanilla as some guy's default personalities)
  - pius 19y ago
    Cool, how's the performance? What do you use it for?
    - wallflower 19y ago
      1) Learning to code Ruby on Rails 2) A coffee shop companion 3) 1 and 2 The performance isn't great - about that of a 4 to 5-yr old low-end notebook, not a pressing issue as long as I don't care about it / learn to breathe. Occasionally I wonder what the SD disk is doing thrashing (even though I can't hear it - no moving parts -see the little blinking LED). I'm not doing anything processor-intensive just hacking/googling my way around the unfamiliar neighborhood of Ruby on Rails. As a distraction, YouTube videos play fine. I have Windows XP installed (so I can tunnel into the corporate VPN) - the Ubuntu should perform for coding much, much better.

PStamatiou 19y ago

see also: http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/03/20/review-macbook-air http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/03/20/review-macbook-air :-)