Posted on 16 October 2008, at 12:59 pm, by Dan Cohen
I had a MacBook Air for a few months. In fact, mine arrived the very first day they were out. I absolutely loved the size and weight of it. Moreover, it was just one beautiful notebook. The problem was, I was away for an extended period over the summer and while relying on the Air as my sole computer, I discovered that its limited power and connectivity started becoming an issue for me. I use a lot of voice recognition, do a good bit of video conferencing and have started doing some video editing on my Macs and, quite honestly, the Air didn’t cut it for me.
I sold it on eBay (gotta love eBay!) and picked up a MacBook Pro with a 2.4 ghz processor.
What a difference! What a powerhouse! What a beautiful screen! As a good friend of mine puts it- the thing is a desktop computer in a portable package. I loved everything about it except for the weight. At 5.5lbs I found it to be more than a bit of a pain to carry everywhere with me. So… knowing that new notebooks were on the way I sold it on eBay for a nice price (I figured it was better to do it early before the price dropped because of the new models) and have been notebook-less for the past few weeks.
I watched the feeds of the ”Apple Event“ on Tuesday knowing that I would be ordering a new notebook by the end of the day. That was when I started bouncing back and forth like a ping-pong ball.
Which to buy? Which to buy?
The new Pros are beautiful and powerful. Unfortunately they actually add a bit of weight over the previous generation.
The new Airs will have bigger drives and superior graphics but it still maxs out below 2.0 ghz of processor power and 2gb of ram. Oh, and they aren’t available for another few weeks.
The new MacBooks go up to 2.4ghz, shed a bit of weight, have LED screens and have superior graphics than previous models. Unfortunately, they still use integrated graphics and they dropped the Firewire.
So which notebook just showed up at my house??

The new MacBook with 2.4ghz, 2GB of ram and a 250gb hard drive.
My thinking was this-
a. I loved the size and weight of the Air but missed the power.
b. I loved the power of the MacBook Pro but missed the size and weight of the Air.
c. The MacBook strikes the best balance between size, weight, and power. Moreover, once I upgrade it to 4mg of RAM it is going to be one awesome machine.
I’m just now setting it up. My first impression… WOW!
Related posts:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
LUCKY! Congrats though!
October 16th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I’m waiting on mine still. Said it’ll arrive on Monday. I added my RAM at Apple because I checked and it was only a few dollars more there than at Crucial which is where I get my RAM usually. So I had a one-two day delay because of that – oh well. I am *so* looking forward to that
October 16th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Good deal Alex!
You are going to love it. I am in the middle of setting mine up and there is no question that, for my needs, I made the right choice. The size, weight and power are a nice balance for me and the screen and “brick” case are a knockout!
October 16th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
so have MBP envy. Wish I could jump on the band wagon; but will have to live with my current MBP, circa 12/2006.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
That looks like such a nice size. So tempting..
October 16th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Does it run Leopard well? 2.4GHz and 250GB are all good and well, but.. 2 meg of RAM? 4 meg of upgraded RAM?
October 16th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Runs great actually. Even voice rec., which choked the Air, is terrific. That said though…
the 4meg RAM4GB RAM upgrade will happen as soon as I can get my hands on it!October 16th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
You did mean 4 Gig, not Meg right?
October 16th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
of course.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
I picked a 2.4GHz MBP yesterday. I really needed to upgrade from the 1.67GHz AlBook that I’ve had for 3 years. I am totally loving it. I was very tempted by the size of the MacBook, but knowing myself, I would bitch and moan about the 1280×800 screen for the life of the notebook. I hope you enjoy yours, I know I’ll be enjoying mine.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
nomaded-
congrats on the mbp!
As I wrote… I went back and forth and back and forth. There is no question that I will miss the screen on the mbp but, as with all things, there are trade-offs in either direction.
Nice thing is, either direction gets you one great notebook!
Enjoy yours!
October 17th, 2008 at 1:34 am
My new MBP is also bought, getting its first charge right now