So my mother has had a Macbook Air (2008) model for over a year now. Honestly it’s been kind fo a trial to own the machine. The machine has been in and out for repairs at least 3 times in the past year. So I was taking a look at the machine about a month ago and noticed the screen was flickering and the screen hinge was loose. Considering the Applecare was due to expire in April 2011 I figured I’d take it in and get it all fixed. Went to the Apple store, and naturally they shipped it off to their repair center and upon receipt of the machine it was exhibiting the exact same screen hinge issue. It’s worth noting that the last round of repairs required 2 times of the same repair to actually get it fixed correctly. So after this latest repair not fixing the issue I was a bit annoyed so when I went to the same Apple Store I was at a week earlier for the exact same issue I kind of was irate.
The manger and the techs were exceedingly nice. And after a bit of paperwork they actually returned the old macbook air and gave me a BRAND NEW 13″ Macbook Pro. They swapped out a nearly 3 year old Macbook Air 1.6Ghz for a brand spanking new 1.86Ghz 13″ 128GB SSD Macbook Air. Not only that they re-issued AppleCare on the new machine so it’s covered for the next 3 years! I have to give Apple many thanks for such an astounding result. I honestly wasn’t expecting this but it’s certainly nice to know it can actually happen. My mother is quite pleased with the rather substancial upgrade. The only issue I have is the fact that my mother for what she does with her computer will not have any need to ever buy a computer for the next 3 years. But I will tell you it’s left an impression on me and my mother. So we will likely be getting new Macs in the future.
So it would appear I made a hasty conclusion in my previous posting. So it appears that the new Macbook Air has some sort of SSD caching going on. So after so many reboot cycles the boot times of my Macbook Air has dropped dramatically. It is basically in the 15 second range that I have seen in other videos. So if your Macbook Air is booting slow I would say reboot a few times and it will work itself out.
So in reading some reviews around the net and people’s experiences it would appear that the 128GB model of the 11.6″ Macbook air is dramatically faster.
So based on this review of the 128GB model. And my own experiences with a 128GB model in store. It would appear the SSD in the 128GB model is rather dramatically faster by roughly a factor of two!
Honestly, I’m feeling slightly shafted. If they had a 64GB model where the experience would have be closer what I actually now have I think I would have opted for a 128GB one.
Update:
Additional evidence of faster 128GB boot here and here.
So I don’t want to get into a whole review and re-hash of what everyone else is saying. However, here are some impressions I have gleamed from owning this machine for several hours which I have not read elsewhere.
Based on what the tech at the Apple Store said that the Mini DisplayPort does support Audio via HDMI adapter. I did try to test this but apparently by Mini Displayport to HDMI adapter doesn’t support audio (I also tried this on my i5 Macbook Pro which does support this feature).
Not many people have mentioned that the trackpad is thinner in height than all the trackpads used on current generation Macbooks.
Macbook Air Trackpad Dimensions 4.12 x 2.45″ (compared to i5 Macbook Pro 4.12 x 3″)
The difference in trackpad dimensions are almost completely overlooked if your a regular user of one of the previous trackpads.
The “instant on” functionality does not work in Windows 7 via Boot Camp (see my previous video).
The system overall is surprisingly peppy given the 2GB of RAM. Which is a case to stop reading the specs of a machine and simply use the machine in real world applications.
There is no ambient light sensor on this Macbook.
The icon/animation used for Spaces switch is widescreen.
The ports are angled to line up with the Macbook sitting level on a table (not level to the bottom of the notebook).
85W Power Adapter (even older version) will work on the Macbook Air no problem.
So I just got a new 2010 Macbook Air 11.6″ 64GB Model. And I’m in the process of getting Windows 7 setup. Figured I’d post the Windows 7 Experience Benchmark Scores.
So if have a setup where you don’t have PAT translations inside of a network. And you have an HTTP proxy server like squid, but would like to monitor a URL via Zenoss’s HTTPMonitor this is how you set it up. See the screenshot below it’s fairly self explainatory.
Put the proxy server location in the Host Name field.
Supply the proxy port of the proxy server in the Port (Squid default = 3128)
In the URL field put in the normal URL you which to monitor.
If your proxy server requires authentication use the Basic Auth User / Password fields to under the login for the Proxy server.
So if you’ve done a zenoss-stack install on Ubuntu using the standard repositories and want to upgrade to the latest stable release 3.0.2 here are instructions.
Sean Furukawa is a fixer, photographer, Linux bigot, Subaru Enthusiast, Apple fanboy, OSS junkie, has "Technology A.D.D.", programmer, an "idea man", has "business acumen", and has dry hands.
