Sunday, July 31, 2011

Is new MacBook Air 2011 worth buying?


Apple just release the MacBook Air on last Thursday (21 July 2011), together with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and new Mac Mini.

The new MacBook Air 2011 has almost the identical design as last year 2010 model. The new MacBook Air came with thunderbolt, backlit keyboard, new cpu, and NO it doesn’t start with 4G ram and 128G flash storage, but started with the same price USD999. The 4 different model selling at RM3099, RM3699, RM3999 and RM4999.

Is the new MacBook Air worth buying?

The short answer is YES! But is still depends on your need.

Who will not buy MacBook Air? Apple haters don’t buy MacBook Air. Users need all in one notebook don’t buy MBA, users need powerful notebook, no budget? Don’t buy MBA. The list grows from here. Other than the list, you can continue reading this.

Is less than 12 months after the previous MacBook Air release, normally it takes longer than that for a new refresh. The outlook form factor is not much changes compare with the last release model, the only thing that you might notice is the mini port has changed to thunderbolt socket.

The outlook might not change a lot, but the hardware specification is quite different. While the earlier version of MBA using core 2 duo (L9400), and majority of the other notebook at the same time use core i3, core i5 (or core i7) CPU, previous MacBook Air was being criticized for using an out dated CPU. This is true for Apple case, it doesn’t look like Apple style. Apple usually use the latest hardware specification.

The new MBA using the latest Sandy Bridge 2 core CPU, which is at least 2 generation from core 2 duo. Sandy Bridge CPU is the latest 32nm CPU release by Intel early this year, it is the second generation of core i5 (or i7) series, new MBA is using the 17 watts ULV series and not the 35 watts which is commonly seen out there, the core i5 ULV (2557M) should just being release on 2011 June. Some reports saying that the new MBA performance is 2 times of the previous MBA.

Unless you want to wait for 22nm Ivy Bridge, or an A6 processor for the Air. Macbook Air is a good buy.

Reference:
Is MacBook Air worth upgrade?, maccrazy. 
Apple could adopt ARM, Arstechnica.

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