Guro

Three weeks ago, I decided to dispose the Macbook Air in favor of a new Macbook Pro. The 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo powered Macbook Air with 80GB of HDD was replaced by a 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo 15″ beast with 4GB of RAM and 250GB of HDD. Whilst I had raves for the Macbook Air when I got it — to the extent of selling my 2.33GHz Macbook Pro — I simply couldn’t believe how much I missed the power of the ‘Pro.

Computers should adapt to the way you work and not you adapting to the limitations of the computer. I thought I can live with the Macbook Air constraints but painfully realized that I couldn’t. I had to realize that more than anything else, I am a power user!

1. I develop software. Developing on the Macbook Air is not impossible. However, it is just too taxing on the processor. Unless you do not have anything else to do like play iTunes whilst coding, the Air is perfect. The moment you push it, it stalls. 
2. 2 USB ports. I was able to live with 1 USB port for awhile. However, having the Air tethered to an HSDPA modem requires another USB port to be freed up for other things, such as, USB thumb drives. Two USB ports would have been nice or a built-in HSDPA support is even better!
3. Core Shutdowns. Whilst this does not happen as much when doing the usual day-to-day stuff such as email, web surfing, IM, Keynote, Pages, etc., the moment you fire up Skype or iChat, the system just stalls or worse, it renders the computer unusable for several seconds whilst it recovers! Yes, it is such a pain. I wouldn’t mind having a core shutdown as long as the entire system is still usable but unfortunately, this is not the case.

If and when Apple comes out with a better spec’d Macbook Air or a lighter Macbook Pro, then I am 100% sure to trade in my Macbook Pro for the new one. At the moment, the Macbook Air is simply not for the power user, and starting right now, I will not pretend that I am not one.