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I'm definitely in the minority here but sometimes it's good to have some counterpoints about the new MacBook Air. I recently bought one with 13" thinking it wou

by iaskwhy 15y ago

I'm definitely in the minority here but sometimes it's good to have some counterpoints about the new MacBook Air. I recently bought one with 13" thinking it would be my best computer ever. Well, hardware/power-wise it is incredibly fast! But I found out some things that make it almost unbearable. There are only three ways to interact with a laptop and I believe it fails deeply in two of them. The trackpad is very much ok, probably the best one I ever tried. But the keyboard... While the design looks amazing, keys are really thin and feel cheap. As soon as I turned the laptop on and needed to enter my Apple ID, the first time I pressed the Alt key it just came out! This hasn't happened yet to any other key on this laptop but I used to have an iMac with a similar keyboard and three keys stopped working. You can feel the fragility of the keys by putting one finger on the top of the key and another on the bottom, and then press them alternatively: the key bounces like a boat. While I can't say it's the worst keyboard I ever had (because I owned an iMac), I never had such problem with any other laptop or external keyboard. I could also talk about the really small size of the arrow keys. I miss them all the time. And the return key is also much smaller than every other keyboard I have tried before. The other way to interact with the laptop (more like it interacting with me) is the screen. I was crazy about having a really good definition screen and it is. But operating systems are not made for resolutions like that so it all ends up with really really small text everywhere and zooming all the time because you will mostly never get into a text properly sized for a screen like this. If you use Windows you can set the DPI to whatever you want but webpages text will still be incredibly small. So I have a hard time typing and reading on it. I can't recommend it to anyone.

DuncanIdaho 15y ago
Regarding your complaint of rocking keyboards. I went and checked my ol' T60 and by god, do T60's keys rock like a drunk sailor. But it's universally regarded as one of the best laptop keyboards available.
- iaskwhy 15y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's easy to find a bad keyboard, I was just never that unlucky until now I guess. The problem is not only that they bounce but that if I press either the top or the bottom I feel that it might break the key. I believe the MacBook Air is universally regarded as one of the best screens available for a laptop but on a recent poll here more than 50% of the comments said they zoomed in all the time so I tend not to care much about what is universally said and more about how I feel about it. It's good to know how people feel about something but I can't make it my word until I try it myself. Edit: Also because I might be looking for something else than the majority of people, I don't know, just thinking out loud now because I like that topic a lot!
- iaskwhy 15y ago
  I'm replying to you again but with a different view. Is the T60 keyboard the same as the X200? Because it's what I am using now and it's an amazing keyboard. This is important because if you say these keys move a lot then we are definitely not talking about the same feeling, probably because I can't explain myself much better. My only problem with the X200 keyboard it the documents keys near the arrow keys, even after almost one year working on a X200 everyday I still hit them. It used to be so good when the arrow keys were a little bit apart from the main layout of the keyboard. I do love my Sony Vaio for that.
  - DuncanIdaho 15y ago
    Oh, I didn't mean to imply that its not good keyboard. I love Thinkpad keyboards I even profess my love publicly (http://www.janezstupar.com/the-best-keyboard-for-programmers http://www.janezstupar.com/the-best-keyboard-for-programmers). There are two major beefs with Thinkpad keyboards. First the positioning of fn key and lack of option to remap it is inexcusable. Second the page keys you mentioned.
    - iaskwhy 15y ago
      Yes! The fn key is so annoying there. I didn't mention it because it seems like that's the standard now, so wrong...

by iaskwhy 15y ago

DuncanIdaho 15y ago

Regarding your complaint of rocking keyboards. I went and checked my ol' T60 and by god, do T60's keys rock like a drunk sailor. But it's universally regarded as one of the best laptop keyboards available.

iaskwhy 15y ago
I'm pretty sure it's easy to find a bad keyboard, I was just never that unlucky until now I guess. The problem is not only that they bounce but that if I press either the top or the bottom I feel that it might break the key. I believe the MacBook Air is universally regarded as one of the best screens available for a laptop but on a recent poll here more than 50% of the comments said they zoomed in all the time so I tend not to care much about what is universally said and more about how I feel about it. It's good to know how people feel about something but I can't make it my word until I try it myself. Edit: Also because I might be looking for something else than the majority of people, I don't know, just thinking out loud now because I like that topic a lot!
iaskwhy 15y ago
I'm replying to you again but with a different view. Is the T60 keyboard the same as the X200? Because it's what I am using now and it's an amazing keyboard. This is important because if you say these keys move a lot then we are definitely not talking about the same feeling, probably because I can't explain myself much better. My only problem with the X200 keyboard it the documents keys near the arrow keys, even after almost one year working on a X200 everyday I still hit them. It used to be so good when the arrow keys were a little bit apart from the main layout of the keyboard. I do love my Sony Vaio for that.
- DuncanIdaho 15y ago
  Oh, I didn't mean to imply that its not good keyboard. I love Thinkpad keyboards I even profess my love publicly (http://www.janezstupar.com/the-best-keyboard-for-programmers http://www.janezstupar.com/the-best-keyboard-for-programmers). There are two major beefs with Thinkpad keyboards. First the positioning of fn key and lack of option to remap it is inexcusable. Second the page keys you mentioned.
  - iaskwhy 15y ago
    Yes! The fn key is so annoying there. I didn't mention it because it seems like that's the standard now, so wrong...