Being the "techie" in my family means I have three jobs. First, to tell people if problems can be fixed, and if I can fix them. Second, to do all of the fixing. Finally, give people advice on any and all things tech. 

However, recently I have been getting numerous questions from both friends and family about Apple's current line of MacBook Airs. I decided to post this online and in public once and for all. 

First some general specs.

MacBook Air

The Macbook Air family is rather diverse, but also interesting. MacBook Airs are currently sold in four customizable options:

1. 11-inch; 64 GB Flash Storage, 1.6 GHz Dual Core Intel i5, 2GB RAM, $999
2. 11-inch; 128 GB Flash Storage, 1.6 GHz Dual Core Intel i5, 4GB RAM, $1199
3. 13-inch; 128 GB Flash Storage, 1.7 GHz Dual Core Intel i5, 4GB RAM, $1299
4. 13-inch; 256 GB Flash Storage, 1.7 GHz Dual Core Intel i5, 4GB RAM, $1599

NOTE: Not a typo, the lowest-end model of the Air is the only model standard with 2GB of RAM rather than 4GB.

Additionally, each model's perdormance is upgradable. The numbers in the following list correspond with the list above:

1. +2GB RAM ($100)
2. Upgrade to 1.8 GHz Dual Core Intel i5 ($150), 256 GB Flash Storage ($300)
3. (none)
4. Upgrade to 1.8 GHz Dual Core Intel i5 ($100)

Now that we got that out of the way, let's go a little deeper into the good and bad of the MacBook Air. 

What it Has

Because of the MacBook Air's, well, Air-ness, the aluminum casing is just .6 inches thick at it's thickest part. This means that apple had to sacrifice some space somehow, which meant that storage went completely flash. While only using flash memory has driven up the cost of the computers, it has also driven up the durability and speed of the computers dramatically.

Because a flash memory hard drive has no moving parts, it is significantly more durable than a traditional spinning hard drive, it can  be dropped and shaken and theoretically will have no damage done to the hard drive. Having said that, you still shouldn't go around throwing your computer at walls and shaking it like a maracca for the hell of it. It is still a fragile piece of computing equipment to be treated with care. 

The other thing that flash memory brings to the table is speed. Because flash memory is so much more simple than a spinning hard drive to access, and it doesn't require searching a physical disk, it can be 3x-4x faster than a traditional hard drive. For example, when put against a 15-inch MacBook Pro with 2x the RAM and processing power, and 4x the hard drive space, it still had less hang time and faster start up time, but I'll explain that more later. 

However, as I said earlier, it drives up the cost considerably. If these computers had spinning hard drives they would probably be between $600 and $900. 

Finally, the new MacBook Air family also has a thunderbolt port. This one is a little more difficult to explain, so I'm just going to post a link to Apple's explanation page. (http://www.apple.com/thunderbolt/) Essentially thunderbolt is a brand new port for high speed connections to displays and thunderbolt-ready peripherals (there aren't many). The other beauty is that your standard display connectors that you may already have are still compatible with the thunderbolt port. That's as far as I'm going on that.

What it Doesn't

Mostly places to put things. 

Due to the smaller size of the computer it is missing a few ports that the MacBook Pro has. It is missing Ethernet, Firewire, Audio In (however the headphone jack is actually a dual headphone audio in port), and the 11-inch models do not have an SD card slot. Having said that, Firewire is becoming outdated, you can buy a USB-Ethernet Adapter, and as I said, the headphone slot is a compound Audio In/Out port. As for the SD card slot on the 11-inch models, card readers are dirt cheap these days, you can probably buy a USB Card reader for $10-$20. 

The other biggie is an optical CD/DVD drive. Due to the general lack of space to put things, you could imagine that there isn't space to put an optical drive. This means no disks in your computer, although easily solved by buying Apple's $70 USB Superdrive or a third party equivalent. If you decide to buy the 3rd party product, make sure to ask if it is compatible with the new line of MacBook Airs. 

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is needs. With flash storage and lightning fast processors for the Air, it will do great for photo, video, and any general computing needs. However, if you plan on doing anything with large files or lost of video and photo editing, do go with an Air, you don't want to sacrifice the extra hard drive space for size and weight of the computer. If you're a person who does a lot of work with CDs and DVDs, this may also not be the computer for you, unless you're willing to shell out $70 for Apple's optical drive. Finally if ethernet or firewire peripherals are important to you, you're going to end up spending a lot of money on adapters if you don't buy the Pro. 

I hope this helped, and happy computing!

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