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What he's saying is that size does matter.

Not really but I think it's annoying when some of the people in here are that modern SFF system have bricks too when today's brick are so much smaller than the brick back then. That was the original point I was subtly addressing.

robco wrote:

The units I saw were being manhandled for quite some time and all felt cooler than my MB.

Hence the need for side by side torture and practical testing. Just running the desktop doesn't draw much power, and handling it is different from having it sitting in your lap a few hours. Page two sums up a number of issues nicely...

Performance appears to be all but solved. The fact that Apple can cram a near-2GHz Core 2 Duo into the MacBook Air either means that Moore's law has caught up with our desires or Apple is going to make it so you can no longer have children.

The hard drive is a definite weak point of the MacBook Air, but the SSD option is bound to fix slow disk performance in this ultra-portable device. Unlike mechanical hard drives, you don't give up performance to get a physically smaller drive - it's simply a case change. The 1.8" SSD in the MacBook Air will offer the same performance as a 2.5" SSD, something that can't be said about 1.8" hard drives vs. 2.5" and 3.5" offerings.
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The lack of a user replaceable battery is less of an issue as you'd think at first glance. The biggest problem is that you can't carry a spare, but lugging around an extra battery would really eat into the MacBook Air's portability factor. Chances are that within 2 years you'd be able to get the portability of the MacBook Air with even fewer compromises, or purchase something even more portable - so the usefulness of such a product is more limited than most computers. It's an expensive proposition, especially when you keep in mind that you'll be tempted to replace it in 2 years, but this is how the ultra-portable world turns.

Etc. How many of the units on display had the SSD?

ScifiterX wrote:

Not really but I think it's annoying when some of the people in here are that modern SFF system have bricks too when today's brick are so much smaller than the brick back then. That was the original point I was subtly addressing.

And you're right that I missed that the first time.