Wife's 50th birthday - Macbook Air??

Posted by: Jonathan Gorse on 08 May 2012

Hi folks,  Just looking for some views on the Macbook Air for my wife's 50th birthday.  She travels quite a lot on business and has complained repeatedly about having to lug a full size laptop around and has hinted that what she would like is something lighter.  I've taken a look around because the first thing that sprang to mind was a netbook but they strike me as lacking in power for running office apps and maybe watching DVD in a hotel room etc.  We've always been PC owners but I have to confess that the Apple disciples amongst my pals and the quality of Apple design has encouraged me to look at 'the other side'.

 

I recently had a complete nightmare trying to get a NAS drive working on all the PC's in the house and as a result have had about enough of windows and its requirement to continually bugger about in its bowels just to accomplish a task that should be simple.

 

We're both IT Professionals - not programmers, but certainly pretty savvy so I'm not expecting the switch to cause too much trouble - but will it?

 

The model I'm considering is the latest Core I5 model with 4GB RAM and 128GB Solid state drive and a 13 inch screen.  John Lewis are selling it here: http://www.johnlewis.com/231342428/Product.aspx

 

Any views?  The household will continue to be primarily Windows based with 3x Windows 7 laptops, a NAS plus another Windows 7 work laptop - will mixing O/S cause headaches? 

 

One final question regards movie playback.  Currently if we are away in a hotel we carry DVD's with us - this machine doesn't have a DVD drive so can we add any old DVD drive offboard or is there a better option for ripping (legally) to hard disk?

 

I'd welcome any advice.

 

Thanks,

 

Jonathan

 

 

 

 

Posted on: 06 June 2012 by James L

Jonathan

 

The Tosh' seems like a sensible decision made with the head.

 

The new slimmer Mac Books I believe are due towards the end of the year and with the retina display they'll be a must have so expect to be finally swayed to a Mac Book! 

 

I do admit that Mac's and Office do not play well together. It's like using software from the early 90's.

Posted on: 06 June 2012 by RaceTripper
Originally Posted by James L:

Jonathan

 

The Tosh' seems like a sensible decision made with the head.

 

The new slimmer Mac Books I believe are due towards the end of the year and with the retina display they'll be a must have so expect to be finally swayed to a Mac Book! 

 

I do admit that Mac's and Office do not play well together. It's like using software from the early 90's.

 

New slimmer, retina display MacBook Pros may be much sooner than that, like next week at Apple's WWDC.

Posted on: 06 June 2012 by winkyincanada
Originally Posted by James L:

 

 

I do admit that Mac's and Office do not play well together. It's like using software from the early 90's.

Yeah, I don't use Office much on my Macbook, but when I do, I am frustrated by the (pointless?) differences to the Windows version on my work machine. Hard to say it is definitely worse (although this seems likely), but certainly different enough to be annoying.

Posted on: 06 June 2012 by JRHardee

With the savings over a Mac, you can hand her the laptop in Paris. Fifty is a pretty big deal.

Posted on: 06 June 2012 by Don Atkinson

Jon/FlyBe don't do Birmingham-Paris, so it will have to be Warsaw or Dussledorf or, with a bit of luck - Prague

 

Cheers

 

Don

 

PS all places are ficticious, no doubt FlyBe do call at Paris CDG