black friday notebook

Lovethefuture Say: Apple MacBook Air MC969LL A 11.6-Inch Laptop (NEWEST VERSION)
Awesome Laptop (With One Caveat), 2011-08-21
This review is for: Apple MacBook Air MC969LL A 11.6-Inch Laptop (NEWEST VERSION)
Sold my 13" MacBook Pro so that I could finally get the 11" MacBook Air. I held back getting one last fall when it was initially released because I couldn't use something without a backlit keyboard. I also knew that a Core 2 Duo processor, which last year's model featured, was already long in the tooth.If you do opt for the 11" MBA, I highly recommend this model instead of the base/cheaper one. 4 GBs of RAM insures that your new laptop will be running smoothly at all times (as long as you don't push it too hard).What I love about my Air:OS X Lion: An excellent new operating system.Performance of Solid State Drive: No more spinning disk from Hard Disk Drives. This allows for better performance all around without any moving internal parts.Thunderbolt: A bit early to celebrate this but take peace of mind knowing that future super fast external hard drives and other peripherals will be available to you thanks to this new technology.Backlit keyboard: No way I was getting an Air until Apple brought this back. Once you've had this on a laptop it's almost impossible to lose it again.Size and shape: At 2.38 lbs you will absolutely fall in love with this machine. So light and small yet still powerful! The perfect travel laptop.i5 processor: 2.5 times the performance of the previous MacBook Air model. Handles tasks like encoding in Handbrake and simple movies in iMovie with no problems. Especially with 4 GBs of RAM.11.6" screen: Unless you really need a larger 13" screen, I'm confident you will be more than happy with what this model Air offers. Great for watching movies, using iTunes, writing emails, etc.About that screen......: The screen is glossy however the silver bezel allows for significantly less glare vs the edge-to-edge glass screens of the default MacBook Pro's. (Anti-glare screens are an additional $50 with the Pro's and aren't offered on the 13" model.)What I don't Love:The Caveat (Battery life): I get a touch under 4 hrs with wifi on, brightness at 75% (12 bars), AdBlockPlus extension running in Firefox or Chrome, Time Machine not configured. (And yes, Flash installed.) Expect more battery life if you keep wifi off and lower the brightness of your screen (while doing non intensive task). I'm okay with the battery life but to me there is a great deal of room for improvement. I'd like future 11" models to get 6 hours or more of battery life under the same tasks. Hopefully Apple can figure out a way to do this in the future.FaceTime camera: A fine webcam but not the HD quality you will get in the current iMac's and MacBook Pro's. Something to keep in mind.IR Sensor: There is none on this model, which means you can't use an Apple remote to control video, etc. This especially becomes annoying if you like to connect your Air to an HDTV (as I do). The work around is using an app on your smartphone or a bluetooth trackpad.Sleep & battery indicator lights: There are none.Built in 3G: The Air is just BEGGING to have some form of 3G built into it a la iPad. I'm praying future models will offer this moving forward. (4G 2012 MacBook Air? Are you reading this Apple?) :)11" vs. 13".I feel the higher end 11" model is the way to go because for not much more money you get a good sized hard drive and 4 GBs of RAM. However, if you spend just a little more money you can get the 13" base model Air which is essentially the same computer however with a bigger screen and more battery life. It's a tough call for sure. If you think you really want a larger screen and more battery life, and can deal with the heavier computer, (roughly .6 lbs more), than it's worth considering. However do know that after spending some time with the 11" Air you'll be shocked by how much bigger the 13" model looks and feels during use.I'm thrilled with the 11" Air. The Air has transformed from an expensive and limited ultraportable into the flagship model for people looking to get a new Mac laptop.

K. Lew Say: Apple MacBook Air MC969LL A 11.6-Inch Laptop (NEWEST VERSION)
Nice portability, but terrible battery life, 2011-09-17
This review is for: Apple MacBook Air MC969LL A 11.6-Inch Laptop (NEWEST VERSION)
Since I wanted a larger SSD drive (256GB), I considered either custom-ordering the Air from Apple, or buying it at a local Apple store. I finally decided to buy it locally since I didn't want to deal with shipping it back in case there was an issue. The Apple Store has the 11" Air with a 256GB SSD and Core i7 processor. I didn't really need the performance of the i7, but with all the clever Apple marketing (now the Air is more than twice as fast!), I caved and got it. Yes, it's a fast, light machine, and I like the small size of the 11" Air, but the battery life is just terrible. 2 hours on average, 3 hours max. As other reviewers mentioned, running any Flash modules on a Web page will eat into battery life even faster. As an ultraportable, the 11" Air should have a longer battery life. The short battery life bothered me enough that I returned the Air.I recommend getting the 13" Air instead, since it has a bigger battery and hence a longer battery life.

Y. Zhou Say: Apple MacBook Air MC969LL A 11.6-Inch Laptop (NEWEST VERSION)
Lion's Air, 2011-07-26
This review is for: Apple MacBook Air MC969LL A 11.6-Inch Laptop (NEWEST VERSION)
hi therei am not going to go into a deep review, as there are already a lot of reviews out there covering the same things. but I will talk about special things that other reviews may not have covered. I personally have owned the 2010 11" and 13" airs, and I currently own the 2011 macbook pro 15" and 2011 11" air. the 15" is about 2x the processing power as the air (according to geekbench), but it lacks an SSD for faster daily tasks.-- on Engadget, they recently covered that the 11" air has a faster SSD than the 13" ones. not a difference you'll notice but still a nice excuse to purchase a smaller one :) (it was something like 240mbps vs 180mbps estimated)-- the battery life on the 11" is actually down from the previous generation by about 30 minutes on battery saving settings. Last gen can get about 7 hours, this one is just over 6 (about 25% brightness, web browsing only). Also, air's battery life plummets if it does moderate to heavy processing (flash, photo/movie editing, gaming), the pro's battery life goes down, but by much less.-- online benchmarks show that the 2011 11" air is about 2.5x faster in processor speed than the 2010 model. however, if you never used an i5 or i7 processor before, know that you will also be able to multitask a lot better than the old core2duos. for example, you can edit in iMovies and photoshop at the same time (something that will lag the crap out of the old generation).-- DO NOT WORRY ABOUT THE SCREEN SIZE. with Lion, applications can take advantage of its fullscreen function. For example, for many native applications like Safari, Mail, Calendar, etc, you can fullscreen them and they'll take up the entire screen, however, they dont actually take up the main desktop screen, but a whole new screen on its own. if you have multiple fullscreen apps, you can use 4 fingers to flick between them, fast and efficient. I owned the last gen air 11" with 10.6 SL, and it was a bit frustrating having multiple windows open, i usually have to minimize most of them. Now, you can browse in full 11" screen, and use 4 fingers to flick to check your mail.-- keyboard and trackpad have more of an "umfph" feeling to them. a bit more resistance than the older models. the 2010 air was my first mac, and i was disappointed a bit by the light and cheap feeling keyboard, but the 2011 made it right.-- FYI, if you never owned a macbook, the "instant on" feature is actually in all the unibody MacBooks and Pros, but they are just a bit slower than the air's. so don't think of it as a feature only the air has, it's just a bit faster.-- you can't change anything in the air once bought, unlike the pro.-- screen quality is actually worse than the Pro line up. Yes the air has more pixel density, but the vertical viewing angle is pretty bad. it is NOT made of the same screen as the Pro and iPad (IPS), however, it is a matte screen so a much better screen in the sun. i owned both the 11" and 13", the viewing angle problem was much more noticeable on the 13" just because the screen is bigger. I always found myself adjusting the 13" screen every time i move a bit.-- 2gb ram is enough to run lion just fine.-- sound seems to be slightly louder on the 13" vs 11". 11" sound is TINY. i always turn it to max whenever i'm watching videos. headphones are a must.-- if you are deciding between a pro vs air, in general, i would say go with the pro if you do professional work with photo/movie editing, hardcore gaming (at least 15in), or if you plan on buying or already have a tablet. go with the air if you are a light user, want a tablet replacement. Owning an air and a tablet is a huge waste of money.-- I would personally recommend the 1.6ghz, 4gb, 128ssd 11" macbook air. I believe that is the most useful and "bang for the buck" you can get vs the rest of the lineup. but everyone's preferences are different.All in all, my only complaint about this air is the price. the $1200 macbook pro 13" vs the $1200 11" macbook air, the air has a better hard drive, but thats it. it's using less material to make, a slower processor, smaller battery, small and worse screen, less ports, i would think Apple can price it less than the macbook pro. basically, less everything, but paying the same price because it has a good design. thats my 2 cents at least. $899 for the entry model would shut me up :)Hope this will help you decide.