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Is Apple's new MacBook Air worth the price?

With its new MacBook Air product line, Apple's goal is to try to convince us that $1800 (that's one thousand, eight hundred dollars) is the worthy price for convenience. Eighteen hundred is the price to have a laptop that can fit inside a sleek manila envelope, Apple says. Sure, there's much to be said about a laptop that can fit inside a manila envelope and still run a full operating system and harbor a full keyboard, but this only raises the most important question: does the MacBook Air offer anything more to hold our attention or is this book just full of hot air?

The MacBook Air features a 13.3" display, so in comparison to portable competitors like the Asus eeePC, the Air is no slouch. Furthermore, the Air achieves this while only being .76 inches thick at its widest and being a very impressive .16 inches thick at its thinnest. Apple has truly reached a new record low with its 3.0-pound device, so just judging from these specifications, it seems like there's no way it could go wrong. Indeed, Apple MacBook Air is not directly comparable to anything out on the market precisely because it clearly is ahead of its time in size innovations, but once again, is this enough? These are only the beginning of the specifications.

The standard Air comes with a 1.6 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor which can be upgraded to 1.8 Ghz (for $300 more, of course). So far, so good; this Air seems to pack an impressive, respectable punch for a device its size so far - especially considering Intel had to specially engineering smaller CPUs in order for the Air to be this powerful. However, don't expect the Air to be the processing powerhouse that you might need in certain jobs. Fortunately, the Air's 2 gigabytes of included RAM should help out nicely.

Unfortunately, from here, the Air gets sullied with a bit of smog. For storage, the Air can have a 80 gigabyte 4200 RPM hard drive - keeping in mind that all other laptops have moved up to 5400 revolutions per minute as a standard. If you are worried about hard drive access speed, don't fret yet: you always have the option to upgrade to a 64 gigabyte solid state drive...if you can cough up $999 (that's nine hundred, ninety nine additional dollars on top of the $1800 for the pleasure of 16 gigabytes less of storage.)

Next, realize that the Macbook Air features the integrated Intel GMA X3100 Accelerator as a graphics card. What does this mean? For one, it means that heavy graphics processing wouldn't necessarily be the Air's forte (and if


Below are the top articles rated and ranked by Helium members on:

Is Apple's new MacBook Air worth the price?

  • 1 of 10

    by Jack Roviere

    With its new MacBook Air product line, Apple's goal is to try to convince us that $1800 (that's one thousand, eight hundred

    read more

  • 2 of 10

    by Dorian M

    Macbook Air's key attribute: 802.11n Wi-Fi

    " MacBook Air is designed and engineered to take full advantage of the wireless

    read more

  • 3 of 10

    by Jeremy Klarich

    Why pay more for less? That's what you're doing when you buy the new Macbook Air. With it's maximum Memory (RAM) at 2 Gigabytes,

    read more

  • 4 of 10

    by Joyce Priddy

    The new Apple's MacBook Air is extremely pricey in comparison to other laptops. In fact, it is one of the higher priced laptops

    read more

  • 5 of 10

    by Toni Laberge

    It's sleek and shiny. Some have described it as very pretty' and cool'. It has all the glam when it is slid into the manila

    read more

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Is Apple's new MacBook Air worth the price?

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