MacBook Air - how does it compare to its competition?
Those in the know will have been astounded by the new MacBook Air unveiled in Steve Jobs' keynote presentation the other day. By golly, it's thin. There's no arguing that point, it's certainly the thinnest laptop I've ever clapped eyes on. Even my wife couldn't help raising an eyebrow, and she'd be the first to admit she doesn't get on with technology. It's sleek, clever, groundbreaking, and just a little bit controvercial - will this herald the end of the CD in the same way that the iMac convinced people that they didn't need to use floppy disks any more?
Then came the price tag. $1799. A quick currency translation showed that in real money that equates to £917. Not bad, I thought, for a top of the range laptop. So how does the MacBook Air compare to other laptops on the market? £917 is a ball-park figure, so let's compare it to another laptop of the same price. A quick search on eBuyer brought up a Toshiba Tecra A9-12H, priced at exactly £917. Of course, that's a comparison on price alone, and the Tecra isn't aiming to be an uber-lightweight laptop. So a quick look in eBuyer's 'Ultra portable' section showed that the most expensive laptop in that category was the Toshiba Satellite Pro U300-148 T5450, priced at 
£757. So it's a little cheaper, but also a lot smaller and more akin to the MacBook Air in that sense.
So how do they all measure up? Well, I've created a small comparison table for you to download and take a look at, which shows the stats of all three laptops side by side. It's an interesting read, to be sure. For those who can't be bothered to download the PDF, or just want to use up a little more time reading, I'm also going to go into a little more detail on each point, just to clarify the significance of each one.
The Display
Steve was very pleased with his display. Apparently it's a whopping 13.3" in widescreen, and is backlit by LEDs to save power. Its maximum resolution is 1280 x 800, which isn't bad for such a small display (after all, I'm using a 19" flat screen monitor on my desk at the moment, that's far from enormous). However, those stats are very similar to the Satellite Pro, which has the same screen size and resolution, so there's not much difference there. The Tecra on the other hand has a much bigger 15.4" display with a resolution of 1680 x 1050, which is significantly more desktop real-estate. Clearly, if you're trying to conserve space, making the screen smaller seems sensible, but it's not exactly the massive screen that Steve was making out.
The Size
Here, the MacBook Air wins hands down. It's clearly thinner than anything else, even at its thickest point. The other dimensions are fairly credible too, although the Satellite Pro is slightly narrower.
When it comes to the weight, the MacBook Air is lighter than the two laptops I've compared it to. In fact, the Tecra is over twice the weight of the Air. That adds weight (no pun intended) to the MacBook Air's claim to be an ultra-portable laptop; the less weight you have in your bag, the more comfortable you will be walking around town with it. On the other hand, the lighter it is the less likely you are to notice if you forget to bring it home one day or if someone pinches it.
The Storage Space
Comparing memory shows that the MacBook Air has the same amount of RAM as standard as the Toshiba Tecra, with the Satellite Pro lagging behind with only 1GB. These days, 1GB is about the minimum you can put up with (my current Mac Mini only has 512MB, and it shows). Similarly, when it comes to cache both the Air and the Tecra come with 4MB, while the Satellite Pro has only 2MB.
However, it's the hard disk space that really cripples the MacBook Air. Apple certainly knows how to make rugged hard disks, with their experience with iPods, but even so I think 80GB is a little on the small side. Especially when compared to the 160GB that comes as standard with the Tecra, and even the Satellite Pro has 120GB. What's even more hysterical is that you can upgrade your MacBook Air to a smaller hard disk. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? Actually it is arguably a better hard disk, being solid state, but most people aren't going to notice the difference, other than that they can't store as much on it.
Now we come on to the issue of the lack of an optical drive. For those not quite so technologically "with it", an optical drive basically means a CD or DVD drive, with or without writing capabilities. In a similar move to the first iMac shipping without a floppy drive, Apple argues that people are using CDs and DVDs far less these days, so decided not to put one in the MacBook Air at all. Bold move. But on reflection, there may be some sense in this; I rarely use CDs or DVDs any more - I download software from the internet, I transfer files between computers across my network, I backup to an external drive, and I send files to other people via e-mail. There really is no need to burn something onto a CD any more. And I'd still prefer to watch a DVD on my TV rather than at my desk. Both Toshiba laptops shown above have DVD writers built in, as people would expect. But I can certainly see where Apple is going with the 'no optical drive' thing, it actually makes a lot of sense in modern times, especially when combined with that clever trick of using a CD drive in another computer to install software!
The Processor
It's a well-known fact that laptops are slower than desktop computers. They have to be, they're so much smaller. In fact, Steve showed us just how small the motherboard on the MacBook Air was, and my jaw dropped. It's tiny. I'm sure I've got conventional graphics cards bigger than that. At the end of the day, laptops, by nature of being reduced in physical size, are slower than an equivalent desktop computer. We don't expect to be doing hefty number-crunching on the train, we just want to check e-mails and write the odd memo. It's no surprise then that Apple only put a 1.6GHz processor in their tiny laptop. Except that the slightly cheaper Toshiba Satellite Pro also has a 1.66GHz chip, and the Tecra has a whopping 2.4GHz chip, all of them running Intel Core 2 Duo processors. So it looks like the MacBook Air has been out-performed on processor power here. Of course, then there's the whole issue of how well that power is used, but that's another argument completely (see the Operating System section below).
The Battery Life
If you're on the move and want to be using your laptop, you're going to want to be able to do that for as long as possible before needing to plug in, thus enjoying the benefits of untethered computing for as long as possible. The MacBook Air claims a good 5 hours out of its battery, compared to the 4 hours from the Toshiba Tecra. The Satellite Pro doesn't even list its battery time on the eBuyer web site, so I'm not sure that's a good sign.
The Outside World
The time will eventually come when you need more than your laptop has built in. You want to connect a printer, or download photos from your camera, or plug in a Skype phone, or plug in a USB disk, or charge your mobile phone. You'll be disappointed to know that the MacBook Air only comes with one USB port. Just one. That's compared to the three you'll find on both Toshiba laptops, the two on my Mac Mini, the four on my low-end PC. No doubt we'll soon see a good collection of stylish, compact, white USB 2.0 hubs coming onto the market. You can never have too many USB ports. But you can have too few.
Of course, the MacBook Air touts a 802.11n wireless chip, which is the fastest speed currently available, and which is probably faster than most wireless routers are providing at the moment, and far faster than you're likely to be able to download from the internet anyway. It's also got Bluetooth 2.1. I've no idea what the difference is between that and Bluetooth 2.0, but it's a bigger number, so one can only expect that it's better somehow. Assuming you've got something else that's 2.1 for it to talk to.
The MacBook Air also has a Micro-DVI port, which you can use to connect to other displays if you want to (and you probably will if you plan on using it for hours on end, as 13.3" just isn't enough). It's also got a built-in iSight camera and microphone, that clever MagSafe power connector, even a magnetic lid catch. The Satellite Pro doesn't have the magnetic goodies, but it does have a built-in camera and microphone, and boasts a 6-in-1 card reader. The Tecra also has a 5-in-1 card reader, expansion slot, and even a fingerprint reader for extra security and novelty value. The MacBook Air is cool, but it's not as good at connecting with other things as the Toshiba models.
The Operating System
This is a long debate that has been raging elsewhere for many months. Microsoft made a big deal of Vista being so much better than anything else, and a must-have upgrade for existing XP users. Unfortunately, it was rubbish. Vista came in 101 variations, of which the affordable ones had all the best bits stripped out, and still left plenty of security holes open. Oh, and it didn't like your hardware either. Mac OS X Leopard, on the other hand, is superb. It's lived up to its promises, and since its launch has proven to be the most popular release of Mac OS X ever. It's gorgeous, it's faster than Tiger, and there are still no viruses around for Macs. So, when it comes to making the most of the Intel processors in these laptops, I'm betting that the Mac will feel more responsive than its PC cousins, even if their chips are slightly faster.
Interestingly, the Satellite Pro is still being shipped with XP Professional. Clearly Vista still isn't quite as stable and reliable as it would have liked.
The Conclusion
If you want a lightweight, small laptop that will keep you smiling for another two or three years, it's got to be the MacBook Air. The others don't even come close. They're laptops too, but they're just laptops. They're nothing special. Sure, they're faster, have more ways of connecting to your peripherals all at once, but connecting lots of wires generally tends to reduce any laptop's ability to be portable. Apple's radical lack of optical drive may be an inconvenience every now and then, but is it enough to stop you buying it anyway? You don't need an optical drive to check e-mails or surf the web or transfer files or give presentations or listen to music or watch films or back up your files or write letters. And if you do want to connect all that 'extra stuff' to your computer, surely you'd be better off with a desktop computer?
The MacBook Air may not be the cheapest 'ultra-portable' laptop available, nor the most powerful conventional laptop, but it's still mightily tempting nonetheless. It's clever, stylish, bold, radical, fun to use, jaw-droppingly gorgeous, sensible. If I was in the market for a high-end laptop, it would be the MacBook Air all the way.
Matthew