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Passing on the MacBook Air

Looked into Apple Macintosh Laptop computers, as the new lab is a mac lab and decided to pass on the MacBook Air.

In comparison to the MacBook I found
Pros:
  1. Light - 3 pounds (vs 5 pounds for Macbook and my current HP DV2210us)
  2. Illuminated keyboard
Cons:
  1. Max memory is 2Gb (vs 4Gb)
  2. Max CPU brawn 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo (vs 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo)
  3. 80GB 4200-rpm 1.8in HDD (vs 250 GB 5400-rpm 2.5in HDD)
  4. No optical drive (vs 8x DVD burner)
  5. 1 USB 2.0 and NO firewire (vs 2 USB 2.0 and 1 firewire)
  6. No ethernet port
  7. The power connector and the USB slots open out awkwardly from the case base [engadget]
Mostly, this machine will be plugged into a keyboard, a large monitor and will sit on a desk doing number crunching and paper writing (Macs do all the work for you, right, not like PCs where you actually have to write the paper yourself). I imagined the awkwardness with which the MacBook Air would sit, with no ethernet cable, always relying on a wireless network, even for DVD burning/loading, with that side slot half propped open because I want to use a flash drive to move a file. So I decided to go with a fully muscled up MacBook that is as small (the tabletop size is just a bit smaller than the Air), slightly heavier, and has double the memory and triple the harddisk, and infinite times more firewire and ethernet.
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