MacBook Air's thinness, flash drive point to notebook future

After using the solid-state-drive version of the MacBook Air for about 10 days, the notebook's potential is what sticks with me the most. The seminal construction and the influence this will have on future designs is what sets the Air apart.

Note: This is not a CNET review. The Apple MacBook Air CNET review is here. What follows is a brief personal observation, not a review.

In day-to-day use, I am impressed by the Air's boot times (under 30 seconds), resume times (instantly from sleep mode), and lack of hard-drive "thrashing" that occurs invariably on my HP laptop when running many applications (including development environments) over a period of days. Admittedly, none of these three are mind-blowingly better than my HP (Core 2 Duo, 3GB of memory, 7200-rpm hard-disk drive) but they are a big enough improvement to make a difference.

MacBook Air

(Credit: Apple Computer)

MacBook Air solid state drive

(Credit: Apple)

As to benchmarks, I would concur with the benchmarks done at Bare Feats. Their conclusion: "The MacBook Air's 64GB [SSD] excels in small random reads and writes. That explains why it boots so fast, wakes so fast, and launches apps so quickly...When it comes to sequential READS, it beats the HDD significantly in medium to large transfers...The weakness with the SSD lies in the sequential write speed." Subjective use bears out the fast read times. But, to be honest, I've never been able to notice any difference between my HP and the Air in write speed.

The main point of this post, however, is what the MacBook Air augurs. The Air is no doubt the first of many svelte SSD-based notebooks to come from a host of manufacturers. And solid-state drives will only get cheaper, bigger (in capacity), and faster in the coming years. I believe Intel when it says: "The interface sequential performance for SSDs can be designed so that the only limitation comes from the selected storage interface (SATA 1.5 or 3.0Gb, USB 2.0 400MB/s, or SAS 3.0Gb)." In other words--as Intel goes on to say--SSDs can saturate the read and write bandwidth of the interface, which hard disks cannot necessarily do.

Needless to say, the design of the Air is irresistible. Its basic concept--a relatively high-performance notebook PC in an incredibly thin and lightweight package--will be copied by all the major notebook suppliers. Even with the Air's well-publicized shortcomings (which I won't repeat here), that's a good thing.

[ludwig1000]

SSD is certainly the way of the future. But who needs extremely thin laptops, if one has to compromise on basic features like having a firewire port, or multiply usb ports, or Ethernet? The "thin" is really more of a gimmick than anything else...

[john55440]

The notebook of the future is "the superslim ThinkPad X300" by Lenovo.

The feature-crippled MacBook Air doesn't cut it.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_08/b4072042350389.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_computers

[MaLvaDo39]

You don't get it then. Any feature you absolutely need that is not in the MacBookAir is found in the MacBook or MacBook Pro.

The Air is about mobility.

[Viv Collins]

In 1996 laptop connectivity was considered to be a floppy disk! modems and network connections were not included and were very definitely considered and sold as extras.

Why do you consider hardwire connections to be a good thing for a device specifically designed to be portable?

[eCurmudgeon]

What about the life of the SSD's flash memory? Isn't it shorter than a hard disk?

[nrwareham]

ive been using my macbook air everyday since it arrived last wednesday and i haven't missed the lack of optical drive; plus, the 1 usb port is all i need. The actual running of the macbook has been really good, not as slow as everyone says it is, i couldn't tell the difference in speed from a macbook and macbook air