It fits in a manila envelope, weighs less than a Sunday New York Times and rockets an unknown French-Israeli singer/songwriter to the No. 9 spot on the Billboard 100. What can’t it do? The MacBook Air (MBA), the newest portable computer from Apple, is touted as the world’s thinnest laptop, but at what cost? This machine has a lot going for it, but did Apple trim off its usefulness while cutting it down to size?

This machine is small, very small. I knew it was small, but I was still shock when I got it in my hands. So small that in my bag it fits comfortably in a pocket made for folders, allowing me to carry even more useless junk in the padded hole where my laptop should go.

As small as the machine is, it is sturdy. Made of airplane-grade aluminum, with its compact design, the machine feels well-made—more so than my MacBook Pro, which is tough. You have to feel it to believe it, but the machine feels weightless.

Despite its size, the MacBook Air has some impressive features. The 13-inch LED widescreen display is crystal clear, bright and low on battery consumption (battery consumption being an area in which my 15-inch MacBook Pro excels). Along with the razor-thin screen, Apple managed to squeeze an iSight Web camera into the top, á la MacBook, MacBook Pro and iMac. While not the largest screen on a portable, it is a welcome sight considering that most machines labeled “ultraportable” feature only 8-to-10-inch screens; my eyes are much happier with this one. Other body parts pleased with the MBA are my fingers. The inclusion of a full-size, backlit keyboard (another feature commonly left off ultraportables) saved my stubby fingers from drastic surgery (northdenvernews.com/content/ view/922/2). As ultraportable as Apple has made some very un-ultraportable features, there is concern over what the designers chose to leave out to make room.

The first thing Apple did to make the MBA so diminutive was to ask Intel to design a physically smaller processor; the new Core 2 Duo (C2D) processor is 60 percent smaller than its predecessor. While dropping in size, the C2D also lost in power. It’s now the slowest Apple laptop at only 1.6GHz (with a $300, 1.8GHz upgrade). The baseline MacBook (just upgraded) begins at 2.1GHz. In addition to speed, many other items have been trimmed that might be considered necessary to some.

The MBA has iSight, Bluetooth, 802.11n wireless networking, DVI video out, a headphone jack and one USB port (those last three fold into the machine when not in use—a great little detail). While that is enough for many to get their work done, there are limitations. There is no Ethernet jack; however, there is a $20 USB adapter available. The built-in mono speaker is pretty much only good for the chime when the machine is first turned on; there is no rocking out without external speakers. The battery is not user-replaceable (no more getting extras for long trips), and when it starts to get weak, you have to take a trip to an Apple tech for a new one. While 2GB of RAM is great, it is directly on the logicboard, so there are no upgrades, ever. The hard drive is an 80GB 1.8-inch drive, built for size not speed. These are the same drives in the full-size iPods, but they do offer a flash-based hard drive—only 64GBs, super fast, and $1,000 extra.

The biggest missing piece of this puzzle is an optical drive (CD drive), but there are options. With the MBA, Apple ships software to be installed on other computers (Mac or Windows) on the local network that allows the MBA to use the optical drive of the remote computer. Basically, you can use your desktop’s CD drive as the MBA’s drive over a local network. While this is great for installing applications, Remote Disc cannot be used for “commercial playback” or file viewing. This means no listening/viewing/ ripping off CDs and DVDs; all files must be copied to the MBA before opening; and there’s no remote burning of anything.

But wait! Apple has a solution: a $99 USB SuperDrive. The MBA SuperDrive allows for ripping, burning, reading and all the typical optical drive features, but it must be plugged directly into the MBA (the USB port of the MBA is custom). The drive requires more power than the typical USB port, and thus the external SuperDrive will not work with a USB hub. So the optical drive commandeers the USB port, preventing any other device from being attached while the optical drive is attached—no flash drives, no hard drives, nothing.

Honestly, I got this machine expecting to find it completely useless for my needs. I though I used too many extra features on a daily basis to have a machine with such limited capabilities. However, after I thought about it, I realized I rarely use some of the features I would lose migrating from my MacBook Pro to the MBA. Also, everything I would lose I have available in a desktop.

That is when I realized it would be very hard to own an MBA without an additional computer. This is a great supplement. But with many people now using laptops as their primary machines, it is a question of value and necessity.

My mom has an old 12-inch PowerBook. When it is time for a replacement, the MBA would do her well. It has a clear screen and a full keyboard, and it fills her needs for e-mail, solitaire and soapoperadigest.com (sorry to out you, Mom). She does not need the advanced bells and whistles; I believe her optical drive has been used once.

Essentially, for a person who has very basic needs, the MacBook Air is a great solution. For a person with an additional computer that can be used for heavy processing, it is a great portable addition. But someone looking for a computer to do it all will have to look for something else.

Even so, this machine is amazingly well designed and constructed. It does what it advertises perfectly. The MacBook Air offers a superportable solution. It will not do it all, but it does what it claims very well. It is simple, strippeddown, portable, thin and light. Personally, I am hoping this is the first step toward creating thinner, lighter laptops across the board, but even if not, the MacBook Air has already left a footprint.

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