Apple MacBook Air

Apple has released its much awaited laptop earlier this week, which is named as MacBook Air. Yes you got it right, I am talking about the second thinnest laptop of the world after Sony's X505 which was launched in December 2003. Earlier this week, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs have surprised everybody at MacWorld Expo by taking a laptop out of an interoffice mailing envelope. Air is all set to come in market within two weeks and the estimated price of this thinnest notebook will be $ 1,799. Presently it is launched only in Silver color, but Apple would definitely have plans to launch this product in other different colors as Dell did a few months ago. It is just 0.16 inches at its thinnest point and weighs about 3 pounds. Considering the design, this notebook is outfitted with 80GB hard disk.

Other features like a flip down door on side with connectors like, USB 2.0, Micro-DVI for external display, head phone jack and MagSafe connector for power which comes with 45 watt power adaptor existed on other MacBook laptops. It also has an 802.11n based wireless network support and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. Apple estimates that the battery life of MacBook Air with Bluetooth enabled is 5hrs.


Perhaps the thinnest MacBook ever, it is encased in a 0.16 to 0.76 inch of aluminum case. At just 3.0 pounds, MacBook Air becomes the most conveniently portable notebook computer. A 13.3 inch widescreen LED display is same as the other MacBook laptops. The 1280 X 800 resolution give you a polished display with rich colors. A full sized keyboard is just like the one used in MacBook, the additional feature in MacBook Air is the backlit key illumination making it easy to work even at the time to power failures in your place. The track pad is much bigger than the other models.


Compromises

Apart from all the above stunning features, there are few things where Apple had to compromise with space, I will mention few of them here. There is no internal optical drives (CD or DVD drives), a USB based add-on SuperDrive will be supplied on extra $99 cost. But as always, Apple had come up with a new software for the users who do no opt to get that extra optical add-on SuperDrive. They have developed “Remote Disk” which enables you to use the optical drive of another Mac or PC which is on the same network as MacBook Air. The battery is so compact and tightly placed, that a novice user will not be able to replace it with a new one. You have to take the laptop to the service center to get the battery replaced. There is no RJ-45 port, that’s again a $29 for additional USB based RJ-45 port.




Processor

There is a special Core 2 Duo processor designed by Intel for this product, it is based on Merom technology with clock speed ranging from 1.6GHz to 2.2 GHz. It is a Low Voltage Merom based Core 2 Duo instead of the traditional Ultra Low Voltage Merom. The only reason why Apple went with Low Voltage against Ultra Low Voltage is because of the lower clock speed ranges of Ultra Low voltage, however the advantage of Ultra Low voltage Merom based processors is that they operate on even less voltage when compared with their Low voltage competitors. The present processor is the older version of the current Intel’s processor. Apple used a 65nm Merom based processor whereas Intel has just launched its much smaller 45nm Hafnium based processor Apple would definitely have a plan to use the current 45nm Hafnium based Core 2 Duo Intel processor in its MacBook Air. Check more about the processor used in MacBook Air. Let me also mention about the processors which MacBook has been using in past. The MacBook Pro first used Intel’s Core Duo processor, which were replaced with Intel Core 2 Duo processors in mid 2006. The Core 2 Duo was a 64 bit processor designed by Intel corp. for laptop computers. This was developed under the code name “Merom”, it had a FSB speed of 667 MHz and supports the Virtual interrupt technology called as “Vanderpool Virtualization Technology”. This processor was upgraded last year with a FSB speed of 800 MHz






Eco Friendly

There were lots of speculations about the Apple’s strategy towards the ecosystem. Infact last year, Apple was in crosshairs of the environment group Greenpeace. But MacBook Air is truly eco friendly, it has fully recyclable aluminum case, and is the first to have a mercury-free display, the display is LED but not LCD. Even while packaging, the retail packaging of MacBook Air uses 56 percent less material than other MacBook packaging.


Specifications

In the end, lets see the specifications once again.

3 lbs
0.16” - 0.76” x 12.8” x 8.94” (H x W x D)
Full Size keyboard from the MacBook
13.3” 1280 x 800 LED backlit screen
2GB DDR2-667
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz, 800MHz FSB, 4MB shared L2
80GB 1.8” 4200RPM HDD or optional 64GB SSD
802.11n/Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
Starting at $1799


My next post will be a true comparison between the Sony X505 Ultraslim and MacBook Air Ultraportal notebooks.

Editor’s Note: For Our Readers

For next few weeks, I would be writing about the future of today’s high profiled companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo etc.., Truly speaking this would be my research about these companies, in which I would be answering few questions like How did they started? What are they doing?and What will they be in future? Offcourse, to make it more interesting, I would truly cover the technology part of these companies rather than their history, economics and blah blah blah….

We had a internal discussion about, Which company to start with? and after thorough study, we decided to start with the powerful search engine and the high profiled advertising company which is Google. So lets start off, I am sure, you would be loving this idea. However we would also continue to post the technology news and latest happennig in the world of internet.

Citrix The Software Of the Year

Citrix is definitely the software of the year 2007 and is growing bigger and bigger. Recently they have released a free utility called Power Smart, which contributes to the green revolution. This is the first version of this utility. Power Smart helps in power off the most idle presentation server in your citrix farm during off business hours. Once installed and configured, this utility monitors the users during off business hours using Citrix Presentation Server SDK and power off those serves which are not active or have disconnected users. Things can be back to normal when in business hours. More over, it gives the flexibility to run basic administrative scripts on the server.

This tool is designed for the organizations seeking to reduce the datacenter power consumption. HP is the first server vendor in this line, they have demonstrated support for Power Smart in combination with their own power management tools for HP ProLiant Server family.

Download this utility here

Download the user guid here


The best part of citrix comes now. The products from citrix such as Go To Meeting, Go To Webinar and Go To Assist has been rated as the Year’s best softwares by PC magazine. Go To Meeting is the online meeting service from Citrix online, which is a division of Citrix, the best of 2007. Citrix interaction solutions magazine recognized Citrix GoTo Webinar and Citrix Go To Assist remote support and online event service with two product of the year Awards. On the whole, GoTo Meeting is an easy to use meeting solution for conducting meetings or trainings. GoTo Webinar is a webinar solution to conduct events from your PC with nearly a 1,000 attendees. GoTo Assist is a remote assistance tool to view, control and troubleshoot client’s desktop

GoTo Assist . GoTo Meeting . GoTo Webinar

Latest… To Reduce Global Warming

CNET reviews few of the latest happenings to reduce Global Warming and its effects. We have covered the Green Tech solutions by various vendors under this tag earlier. Electronics and computing can really help in reducing Global Warming and its effects up to some extents. Check this out on CNET’s one of the best post. The sports car, the energy plants, Solar panels, Massachusetts’s clean energy area and many more.


Click the below Image for more........


In our post about Global Warming, we have covered about the Virtualization vendors of which HP has come up with Blade Server to virtualize your Data Centers. There was also news about Google’s step in energy area last month. They will be funding esolar for their innovative energy plants. Just wondering, how you can contribute to reduce Global Warming, now worry, just efficiently utilize your power. You kow better than me.... :)

Dell has got its First Every Tablet PC

Dell has introduced its first Tablet PC today. This tablet pc is believed to have a touch screen facility. Dell is not new to the touch screen business. This facility was also equipped in the recently launched entertainment computer from dell named XPS. This tablet PC would be named as Dell Latitude XT. The tablet weighs 3.6 pounds making it the lightest tablet pc available. It runs on Intel core 2 solo or Duo processor, the 12.1 inch display, the integrated ATI Radeon graphics card, comes with 1GB RAM which is upgradable to 2 or 3GB. The hard disks supported are 40GB to 120GB RPM drives and also comes with support for 32 to 64GB Solid State Disk drives. The present operating system’s supported are the Tablet version of XP i.e.. Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005. Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate both 32 as well as 64 bit versions are supported. The Dell wireless support and the Dell Bluetooth support are the added advantages. Dell has also introduced two different broadband compatibilities which are in co-ordination with Sprint, Telus and Verizon Broadband services. The device also offers up to 9hrs of battery life.


There is also a news for Toshiba supporters, Toshiba has released the Portege M700, which is the 2nd tablet pc from this company. Toshiba has been selling tablet pc’s from over an year now. When we compare the features of both these tablet pc’s, the only difference lies is with the price. Toshiba offers its tablet pc for a basic configuration of $1,699 where as Dell’s price tag starts with $2,499 when it starts shipping at the end of this year. Infact, when we enter into more details, Toshiba offers a more faster laptop with the processor’s clock speed of 2.2GHz where as Dell’s is 1.2GHz, it has 4MB L2 cache when compared to the 2MB L2 cache in Dell’s device. However the processor used by Toshiba is not the standard Intel’s Core 2 or Duo one, it is T7500 rather.There are also speculations that other companies who has licenses for Touch screen technologies have registered a defending case against Dell. In future, Dell has also plans to introduce multi touch facility like the Microsoft’s Surface computer and Apple’s IPhone and the recent IPod.