Do Macbook Air's suffer from wrist erosion?

SR71 said:

I currently use a Toshiba laptop and have been using it for 3 years now. It has a silver painted area on the plastics around the keyboard. Over the years, my wrists have eroded away the paint and now in place of where the paint used to be, you can now see the black plastic underneath.

Do MacBook Air's suffer from this?

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The air is made of metal not plastic it will be fine

Since the surface of the MBA is painted as well, if you put continuous wear on it, it will start to flake or chip. I haven't seen any cases of it yet on the boards, but they've only been out for a few months. The time frame for such cosmetic damage is usually a couple years.

The MBA is not painted?
It's an aluminum unibody and you are looking at the plain aluminium.

painting aluminum to make il look like aluminum?
yeah right.

I've had my Macbook air for about 2 years now, and it hasn't been a problem. They are all made out of metal, so there isn't any paint to wear away.

Moshi

I bought the moshi wristpad. it fits perfectly and grips my wrist very nicely when I type. I don't have to worry about ANY wear on my MBA wristpad.

I had an old aluminum powerbook (when the 17" PB G4 first came out) that over years of use, wore down the metal pretty bad, kinda scared me. Granted it's not a unibody style, but just because it's not "painted" doesn't mean the metal can't chip, etc.

I later figured that my watch and the button on the sleeves of my shirt were likely the culprits ...

That said, no idea if there are any changes with the new MBA manufacturing.

I had no erosion issues with my Rev B MacBook Air in 2 years of ownership. On a related note, the keys also held up very well. My experience has been that Apple uses good materials in its products. That doesn't mean they aren't sometimes prone to technical problems (see threads on the 8600GT card used in older MacBook Pros, as well as some logic board issues people had with early MacBook Airs), but physically they hold up well.

I havent had a problem with my unibody macbook pro or air so far with the wrist pad area, but the keys tend to wear smooth spots pretty quickly for me. The glass trackpad also holds up well, as it is glass, but also wears a little eventually.

But regardless if you are really worried, you can get a keyboard/wrist area pad, as eventually you will wear away spots with constant use. ie you can wear away stone by rubbing on it etc.

SR71 said:

I currently use a Toshiba laptop and have been using it for 3 years now. It has a silver painted area on the plastics around the keyboard. Over the years, my wrists have eroded away the paint and now in place of where the paint used to be, you can now see the black plastic underneath.

Do MacBook Air's suffer from this?

Click to expand...

Yeah I find that my wrists are slowly eroding away since I love using my MB Air so often Oh we're talking about the computer.. lol

MBA is made of metal, I've never heard of one chipping and flaking.

My ZaggShield covers the wrist-rest areas so no worries for me...

I have a good idea of which websites you are viewing if you are suffering from wrist erosion.

tut

Just to be clear, the unibody products are not painted, but there are two layers to the aluminum.

Since the body is anodized, what you see is not bare aluminum, what you see is the most top layer of aluminum that has been anodized, that means that there is a layer of aluminum that has been treated to be anti-corrosive, and there is a layer of virgin aluminum beneath.

While it is possible to wear away the anodized aluminum layer, it's far less likely that you would able to acheive this versus a surface that was painted.

I've only really had an issue when ever I wear these wrist pads and using the unibody macbooks.



But in all seriousness, it comes down to how much you use the computer, and any dirt that might be on it (ie adding to the grind factor.) Anodized aluminium is fairly tough, but repeated heavy use/rubbing can wear away at stones (ie worry stones). But compared to other painted plastic laptops, it should last alot longer. If you are really worried, you should get wrist area padding if you need to keep it absolutely new looking.

I foresee eventual erosion, if only because it happened on my previous 12" PB and 15" MBP (albeit last before unibody). Painted or not it feels just the same and I can easily imagine black dots appearing through wear, regardless of the physics of the situation .

Nothing will happen, but I assume you won't really care if it did happen in 3 - years time anyways (like your Toshiba)

The corrosion from sweat forms aluminum oxide - which in of itself is one of the prime ingredients in anti-perspirant.

If you want to prevent this just clean your laptop often. I went 2 years with my early 2k8 MBP being pristine. Then I got sloppy with the cleaning and light corrosion began to appear. Got back on the ball and it's remained pretty light.