MacBook Air vs ThinkPad X300 [parody]

This is a pretty clever (and well done) parody of the MacBook Air commercial featuring the ThinkPad X300.

It’s (the X300) definitely a decent ultraportable/subnotebook/fitsinanenvelope computer….it just doesn’t run OSX which is why I sold my eeePC.

via TUAW

MacBook Air 12 hour review

As in I’ve had it for 12 hours….not a 12 hour long review….although there are a lot of pictures.

Obviously I haven’t had it long enough to really put it through it’s paces but here’s a bunch of photos and a few thoughts.

As with all Apple products, the packaging alone is a fantastic customer experience. The MBA comes in a box that reminds you of a board game….I’m not talking something from Parker Bros, but something more elegant. The box is sturdy dark cardboard. The lid has foam glued inside that at first glance looks like velvet. It’s always the little things that make it that much better.

Once you take the lid off, you’re greeted with the MBA in a black plastic tray with a little “Designed by Apple in California” tab that you use to lift the laptop out of the tray and access the other items hidden below. Despite this packaging and computer being Apple’s greenest device yet, the plastic tray has a recycling number 6 which at least around here, isn’t recyclable - maybe it is in California.

It’s deceiving at first how thin it is because you assume the plastic tray is deeper than it really is. You can see in the picture above, the MBA isn’t much thicker than the iPhone. Here’s the MBA snuggled up to the eeePC (both are flat on the table and flush with each other):

Of course since I had the MBA delivered to my office, there was a crowd of people anxious to see it. Some wondered why I didn’t just open it and why was I stopping to take pictures of the box. They now know why.

Once you pick it up, you immediately realize that it’s more solid than you’d expect and does have some weight to it. One big concern many have with the MBA is how fragile it might be because it’s so thin. It feels just as solid as my Powerbook G4 every did while at the same time being light as a feather. It feels well crafted, not unlike a high quality kitchen knife does.

Unlike other Apple laptops, there is not much to the underside of the MBA. There is no battery indicator light which is disappointing nor is there any way to lock up the laptop via lock port. I guess there was no secure place inside to make a lock point. The port door is also much more solid than I was expecting and definitely doesn’t feel like it would break off or stay open - it’s very solid.

The backlit keyboard is fantastic and just like the new keyboards that come with iMac’s and similar to what you find on a MacBook.

Once I got it home, the first thing I did was do a clean install of Leopard with the included install DVDs. The stock Leopard install on any new Mac actually has a lot of wasted stuff including 3.4gb of unneeded printer drivers, 1.8gb of language files. It also has 240mb of space wasted by iWeb. This gives me just about 63gb free with nothing else on it yet. Leopard and iLife take up a fair amount of space and removing those unnecessary files will help once I start using the MBA.

Since my MBA Superdrive hasn’t arrived yet (expecting it tomorrow), I had to use my ‘full size’ external DVD burner which worked no problem over USB.

Now that the install is complete and the Apple pr0n has been uploaded to Flickr, I’m going to go play with it.

Leave a comment if there is anything you want to know about it.

I got my MBA

As I expected, my MacBook Air arrived today ahead of the projected shipping time and before my friend who ordered earlier than me and paid extra for faster shipping. I did have mine shipped to the office and he had it shipped to his house in Port Coquitlam so that may have been the difference.

More pictures and details later!

Playing the waiting game

Impatiently waiting for this thing to arrive.

At least it’s been shipped a few days ahead of schedule…although I appear to have missed the cutoff but is expected (by Apple) to be delivered on Monday, Feb 4th.

I must be looking forward to that ‘new Apple product’ smell you get when you open the package….I wonder if this one will smell any different since it’s now a greener device with no bitter arsenic aftertaste.

UPDATE: The anxious fanboys (myself included) in the forums are scouring the internets for cool ways to track the bundles of Air and found this site that tracks your package on a Google Map (or even Google Earth):

MacBook Air

So yesterday, I said to not buy anything from Apple because today they’d be possibly announcing some new products. Well they did indeed announce a few new things and I bought one of them, the MacBook Air:

It had been long rumoured that Apple would release a sub-notebook and I had guessed that it would fall (pricewise) between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro which it did. My guess was actually $1800 and it lists for $1799US. Strangely it’s STILL more in Canada despite the strong dollar (although slipping a little lately) coming in at $1899.

One of the expected rumours would be that it had a solid state drive (SSD) which means a flash memory based hard drive with no moving parts. It can come with that as an option (over $1000) which is pretty much in line with a similar drive Dell sells as an addon to one of their sub notebooks (the Apple tax in effect). I declined that option as it’s just not worth that much to me and would be cheaper to replace the moving-parts hard drive many times over instead. Plus, it’s a sure thing that SSD’s will drop in price as they become more mainstream and could potentially be swapped into the Air at a later point in time.

My ship date is February 6th with expected delivery by the 18th (just in time for Northern Voice and SXSW!) although past experience with Apple shipping is that these dates are always very conservative and it will most likely arrive much sooner. I also didn’t pay for the expedited shipping (an extra $23) since in the past, new products tended to ship as soon as they were ready so I may end up getting it as soon as a friend that paid for the faster shipping.

Let the MacBook Air race from China begin!

Expect more updates once I get it and some comparisions to current MacBook, Powerbooks and my (potentially for sale) eeePC.

Good Experience: Crumpler Bags

I think I have a problem.

Is it weird for a guy to like gadget bags? I think I have a bag/pouch/container for just about everything gadget I own. I guess I like to protect my stuff. I especially like Crumpler bags.

The latest one I bought a few months back was the Crumpler Keystone which is a laptop and camera bag. It’s very light, small, heavily padded and perfect for running around taking pictures at geek events.

What else can I say, I love the bags that Crumpler makes and keep getting them anytime I see a new one (or get something that needs a bag). I wish there were more companies that cared this much about their products and had such a unique way of marketing them.

Sometimes they send me stuff too (I highly recommend you sign up for their newsletter):

Totally irreverent marketing (who else takes beer in trade for their products?), completely unusable but fun flash website and awesome containers/protectors for geek tech - what more could you want?

More of them of course!

OLPC vs eeePC

The other night after DemoCamp, kk+ asked me about my eeePC and how it might compare to the OLPC (aka One Laptop Per Child project). I got to play with one at SXSW earlier this year at the MAKE booth and wanted one very BADLY at the time. Of course, it wasn’t available to the general public yet.

I’m a sucker for just about any tech in green and this is a green laptop! Granted it really is geared more towards kids (that didn’t stop me from getting a Nintendo DS or many other toys/gadgets), it’s still a fully working computer with a number of cool features. At that time, it was rumored to be waterproof, have fabulous battery life and even have a hand crank so that you could keep it going if you were away from an outlet.

Both are about the same price except the OLPC actually gives you two machines for the price of one eeePC - except one goes to you and the other goes to a child in need somewhere in the world - which is a really cool thing. I can only imagine what it would be like to be a kid and get one of these things.

I didn’t have much more than about 20 minutes to play with the OLPC whereas I’ve had my eeePC for just over a week now so this comparison is a little biased towards the eeePC.

Let’s start with their keyboards:

The eeePC’s keyboard is a much smaller version of a regular laptop keyboard

The OLPC’s keyboard

As you can see from the above photos, the OLPC might actually be a better keyboard for typing since it’s not quite as squished together as the eeePC’s but it’s a rubbery button style that may not be as nice to type on….I think it would boil down to personal preference. At least you could spill your coffee on the OLPC’s keyboard and still be fine. The eeePC’s keyboard is your standard keyboard - one thing that bugs me about it versus any kind of keyboard Apple makes is that you see all the metal bits and pieces underneth the keys….Apple always seems to make them disappear by either painting them to hide or simply engineering them differently like on the new MacBooks and their new aluminum keyboards.

The above chart shows the size of the physical units and their relative screen sizes. The OLPC has a bigger footprint and a slightly taller viewable screen size than the eeePC.

When I decided to get an eeePC, it was for a couple of reasons:

1. size
2. weight
3. hack/expandability
4. formfactor
5. price
6. can I upload my DSLR photos to flickr with it
7. availability

The last item was pretty important at the time since I had just sold my Powerbook and wanted a replacement. The OLPC had just started shipping and I figured it would be a hassle getting one up in Canada. The eeePC was available at my local computer store and they had stock. The flickr aspect was also pretty huge and the eeePC has a built in SD card slot so uploading photos to flickr is dead simple.

I also figured that while both devices are the same price, you are actually getting two laptops with the OLPC which sends one to a developing country and you get one whereas you are potentially getting more computer with the eeePC. If I had kids, I’d definitely get them an OLPC over the eeePC since it seems to be a bit more durable and geared towards them, not unlike Nintendo products (which I also love).

According to ASUS, the eeePC is also geared towards kids and seniors but I suspect the majority of their sales has been to geeks like me that want a decent notebook that travels well. I’d feel more comfortable bringing the eeePC to a meeting than the OLPC….but from a philanthropic perspective, the OLPC is definitely a better choice. If I had tons of money, I’d have both machines.

I haven’t seen one of the shipping OLPC’s around town yet, but I’m sure it won’t be long before one pops up at some nerd event. My eeePC has been pretty popular so far and it’s not even green…yet. I’ll post again on the OLPC once I’ve had a chance to further compare it to the eeePC.

UPDATE: Of course, I post this and then Laptopmag.com posts an in-depth comparison ;)