Thinking of getting a macbook air 13" would like to hear from owners

Best computer I've ever owned.

I've got a 13" i5 256GB.

I actually prefer the grey bezel, after a few weeks, it just fades into the background, really. Nothing to worry about when watching films. It feels more organic than the big black beast bezel, which I found to be too thick. The only MBP bezel I didn't think was too bad was the 17", which is pretty thin.

Agree

Same here, it's the best Computer I ever owned. I got the biggest of the big 13" 256 SSD i7 and I really really love it. It feels good to sit in front of it and work, I love the look and it is so damn fast, unbelievable to see that so fast hardware fits into its small body...

Even the friends of mine who see it are amazed how good it looks and how good it works...

Another proud owner of MBA 13"(i5/256GB SSD)
I got this machine a week ago as my first mac and I absolutely love it
It's fast and very light and it lasts around 7hours which is great.
Go for it! You won't be disappointed
and I don't have any problems with the grey bezel at night

Another fan

I also love my 13" i7. Enough that I am ditching my 17" i7 and making the MBA my primary work machine.

Pros - Speed, size, weight, excellent screen. Every part of it "feels" right.

Cons - Lack of high speed IO, really needs an option for GBe and FW800. I can't wait to get my hands on an ATD.

I have the 13" and the 11", both are very good laptops.
The 13" model is quite perfect, long battery life, nice screen (IMHO, others think different) light weight, powerful enough to do almost anything as long as you don't use it for media production (big files editing like movies or indesign).
It's blazing fast and on top of that also really nice to look at.
Grey bezel never bothered me, although I was yesterday on an 2006 MBP 15" and I liked that smaller bezel.
When it is dark around you and you're watching a video, the bezel isn't noticeable.

The 11" has a shorter battery life and as logic dictates a smaller screen. I find it very good to work on (word/text editing/surfing and emailing) but other people might find that it is a bit small. Both the screen on the 13" and on the 11" are much, much better than the 13" MBP from 2009.

Best computer I've ever owned. Only complaint you'll hear from me is I wish the battery was better. But it is still really good.

The SSD/Screen thing does not matter, no. I would normally say "don't look, just use it", but you should at least check your screen so you can calibrate it right. I never had luck calibrating myself, but there are a lot of nice people posting their calibration results. I finally found one that worked really well. The problem is, if you go that route, you need to know what screen you have so you get correct profiles.

One last thing, I strongly recommend the moshi keyboard guard. Only wear and tear I've had has been on my keyboard.

Again going with the sentiment that it's the best laptop I've ever owned.

Performance is great, comparable to that of the 2010 MBP's in everything except graphics, plus the SSD makes a huge difference/improvement in loading times.

The screen / SSD thing is fine, I have the LG screen and can't really fault it. The SSD's are a little bit different in technical specs but in general usage you won't see a difference unless your general usage consists of only using benchmark tools 24/7!

Battery life is good, you can expect 4-5 hours if you don't worry about power saving options.

Pros

- Weight
- Speed and performance (amazing)
- High resolution
- Bright screen
- Nicer keyboard to type on than my pro!
- Seriously, the weight...

Cons

- Colours on screen are not as vibrant as the Pro
- High high pixel count/resolution could cause early eye strain (lasts a week)
- Kind of feels a bit less sturdy than the Pro models
- Still prefer black bezel, but that's barely a 'con', you won't notice the grey.

About eye strain,well that really depends on each person
For example,for typing/web surfing I set the brightness to 50% because anything higher than that hurts my eyes;however,for movies I set it to 70-80%(or sometimes even full blast)

Biggest flaw for me was build quality:

1st MBA 13" Ultimate (purchased from Apple Store):
Squeaky Spacebar
Very noticeable uneven gradients near the edge of the screen
Weird tactile feedback from touchpad (developed over the course of a week)

2nd MBA 13" Base (purchased from Amazon):
Backlighting issues developed - two long white lines in the middle of the screen

3rd... Hopefully none! Need to wait a month or so for Amazon to ship :'(

erasr said:

Pros

- Weight
- Speed and performance (amazing)
- High resolution
- Bright screen
- Nicer keyboard to type on than my pro!
- Seriously, the weight...

Cons

- Colours on screen are not as vibrant as the Pro
- High high pixel count/resolution could cause early eye strain (lasts a week)
- Kind of feels a bit less sturdy than the Pro models
- Still prefer black bezel, but that's barely a 'con', you won't notice the grey.

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As above - emphasis on super fast for me. And would prefer a true 7 hours battery instead of 5.5 hours actual.

In terms of screen bezel & vibrancy - you wont 'know' any difference. The grey becomes irrelevant almost immediately (i liked the black also) and i dont notice any quality difference against the pro screen - partly because im happy with the Air screen that im not questioning it, and also bcos i dont have anything to compare it too. Its perfectly fine at worst, very good at best - i think its very good.

PS: Im also really glad i went for 256gb. I have 169gb free but its soo nice to have all my stuff on board and not having to worry about managing files. And im getting more media files etc so its nice to just have everything in one place. My iPad is now a bed, back up & consumption device (reading) and my iphone is capture.... the MBA is king. I care not about syncing anymore - i carry my MBA 13 everywhere! But i do just dump everything into evernote incase i want access on ipad or iphone.

Hands down the best machine i've ever owned. 13" 1.7 i5/4GB/128GB

is 256GB worth it? I know it is. But for the money, it's almost $2k after tax. Do you really need it?

kulimer said:

is 256GB worth it? I know it is. But for the money, it's almost $2k after tax. Do you really need it?

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You may regret not getting more SSD room. Depends on your habits.

A good test is this:

Do you ever find yourself totally pissed off you don't have enough hard drive space?

If answer is 'YES', then perhaps you may want to go for it

henrikrox said:

Hello

... i would like something lighter and more portable for college.

So my question to owners, how are you liking it, also what do you think are the biggest flaws of the mba?

How does the grey bezel hold up at night when watching a movie, is the bezel to bright and disturbing?

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It's the cat's meow for college. I use it for taking notes, transcribing homework onto the college website blackboard, etc. It makes it through the longest days and never gets low on battery. I keep the monitor brightness low, turn off bluetooth and wireless and that thing could make it 10 hours I think. The size is perfect for those tiny little desktops. It's easy to carry around as it adds almost no perceptible weight to your bag.

I never even noticed the grey bezel - it's absolutely not distracting at all. Your brain, knowing it's not important, fades it from your perceived vision very quickly. What is important and noticeable is that the screen is more matte than a MBP and doesn't suffer from glare very much.

I like my MBP for home use but 100% of the time when I am leaving the house it's the Air that comes with me.

kulimer said:

is 256GB worth it? I know it is. But for the money, it's almost $2k after tax. Do you really need it?

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I often times regret not getting the 256gig version, but at this point, I honestly don't need it. I have a bunch of games (30 gigs worth), Office, and Xcode installed (along with a bunch of little apps), and still have 60 gigs left over.

As someone above noted, I guess I can always upgrade later if I do run out. Note, I do have a desktop computer with a bunch of storage I can share. Without that, 128 wouldn't be enough. But then again, neither would 256.

kulimer said:

is 256GB worth it? I know it is. But for the money, it's almost $2k after tax. Do you really need it?

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Here's how I usually answer that question.

I determine the maximum space I think I might need over the course of time I will own the computer. Then I double that number. If I think I'll never need more than 50gb then a 128gb would fit my needs. Actually that is exactly what I came up with and I bought the 13" Air with I5 and 128gb SSD. Now if you think your usage may hit 100gb then get the 256gb. The reasoning behind this is that we always forget things when we think of what we might need, we also cannot anticipate accurately what programs we may need or want in the future and how much space they will need. That way doubling your figure gives you a nice margin for error.

If you suspect it's even remotely possible that you may need that 256gb at some point, buy it up front because you can't upgrade an Air later (unless someone comes up with a hack, but I never tend to want to rely on something like that).

henrikrox said:

Question, is it possible, to hook up two apple thunderbolt display to the macbook air? Or just one

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Sound like daisy chaining displays won't for with any macs under 15"

Expand the capabilities of your MacBook Pro.

Connect two Thunderbolt Displays to a 15- or 17-inch MacBook Pro or to an iMac and put an extra 7 million pixels to work. To make a desktop workstation out of your MacBook Pro, just daisy-chain additional Thunderbolt devices, including high-performance storage and video and audio capture devices, through the display.

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Once my wife saw my new 11" MacBook Air, she wanted to dump her '07 13" MacBook for a new 13" MacBook Air. Her 1.8GHz i7 arrived 5 days ago and she loves it as much as a human could love a computer. She's taken it everywhere with her over the last 4 days.

The 13" screen is really nice. Brighter than my 11" (I have the Samsung screen; not sure what's in her 13"). And she loves the SD card slot. The machine is on the order of 4x faster than her 2.4GHz MacBook was, even with the SSD I installed in it right after Lion came out.

She uses it as her only computer and I think she'll be 150% satisfied with it. We have an external optical drive we can share should the need arise (actually with her it already did, but wasn't something she'd need while on-the-go). I think the 256GB SSD will be plenty for her as she didn't even use more than 70% of the 120GB SSD in her previous machine. But now that she's also armed with a new HD video camera (a little Sony 1080p camera that records on to SD cards), she'll probably fill it up quickly.

Went with the i7 mainly because it was only $90 with the educational pricing. Plus, she's going to use iMovie often and the i7 won't hurt when it's going through the stabilization processing and YouTube encoding. And despite the giant 27" quad-core 2.93GHz i7 iMac sitting on the desk in the next room here at home, she likes having all her stuff on her machine, so the i7 was worth it.

When the first MacBook Airs came out, there's no way I would have wanted to use one as my sole computer. Now, I would have no problem recommending them as a 1° computer at all.

henrikrox said:

Estimated delivery: 20th september, longest week of my life, thanks for all the help guys

Really appreciate it

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You should look at the amazon thread where people have waited a month or more.

Did you get the 128 or 256? i5 or i7?

I just got a new HP core i5 laptop issued by my employer, and my 13/i5/256 MBA is so much nicer. Too bad we're not allowed to use personally owned laptops at work.

My 13" 128gb is a fantastic computer. It handles just about everything, well.

As far as getting the 256gb sad, really think about it. Yes, it would be nice to have that much storage. However, it's $300 additional. Instead, you can get a 32gb or 64gb sd card ($50-$100?). Also, you can get an external hdd. All told, these would be a lot less than $300.