Apple MacBook Air user reviews (11-inch, Summer 2011)

Pros Speed and bags of it, the i5 is rapid compared to the last gen 1.4 core 2 even though that was plenty fast. However, this i5 with the 4 gig ram is incredibly practical for all the everyday stuff and when you apply that to the gaming it just gets better.

Cons the xbox 360 plugin and joypad when connected crashes the mac, and it can get oily when playing 3d games (left4dead).

Summary I love it, especially when you add in the discounts that students get when you buy from Apple (like me). I mean I owned last years model and sold it on the day this came out for 600 quid then bought this model with printer, app card, 3 year warranty for less than a grand. Not only that the printer i get 70 quid back. Anyway I love it....just buy one

Pros Pros: very light, full keyboard, decent battery life, SSD memory and good processing, quick start-up from shutdown and sleep, enhanced by lion, no extraneous features, quiet and does not heat-up too quickly

Cons COST... 999$ seems overpriced for the limited base model

Summary I picked this up to replace my nearly 3.5 year old white macbook, which was a wonderful computer. I opted to ditch my optical drive (broken for most of the time I owned it) and spinning harddrive (broke 2 times while stationary) I am not a gamer, nor do I do very heavy photo editing. I mostly just surf the internet, write documents and listen to music. I'm on the go a lot so I wanted something light that could move around easily with me. I don't find the 11 inch screen to be a problem - OSX lion helps with that. That said, I did buy an inexpensive external monitor to connect my air to when I am doing some photo or document editing. I didn't like doing these activities on my 13 inch macbook. I figured that the best compromise was to get a powerful, portable computer and then if I wanted more screen reestate, I could hook it up to a larger screen. This works for me, but everyone's needs are different. I'm looking to go back to school next fall and I figured that this would be the best compromise for what I need. The only draw back I can find at the moment is within OSX lion itself: you still can't change the size of the menu fonts and I find it to be too small sometimes.

Pros Fast, well built, light, beautiful, long battery life, cheap!

Cons None come to mind.

Summary An affordable luxury that nothing from the Wintel world can come close to matching

Pros Amusingly small and light
Spectacular video performance
Built like a tank compared to virtually any other netbook

Cons No 3G/4G - why the hell not?
No Ethernet
No SD slot
Tiny SSD in base configuration
Expensive to start with, more expensive if you want a decent configuration

Summary Went to the store, looked at both, bought a 13. As small as the 11 is, it's not small enough to justify giving up the battery life and interface advantages of the 13. The key thing is weight and the 13 is already light as a feather compared to my 2009 MacBook Pro, so there's no compelling reason to put up with the ridiculous omission of an SD slot, etc. It's funny how there seems to be a threshold after which a device seems really small; an iPad2 in an InCase sleeve seems MUCH smaller than my old 13 in the same sleeve, but the 11 does not. Carrying around a 13 doesn't entail any real burden compared to the 11.

ONE THING would have changed my mind: built in 3G with iPad-like data plans. I don't see why anyone would want such a small and interface-limited device...UNLESS it has broadband.