I recently picked up a refurbished Macbook Air from Apple’s website. I already have and use a late 2009 Macbook Pro 13 which I have “souped” up with 8 GB of memory, as well as removed the optical drive and installed an SSD 240 GB from OWC.
With the prospect of WWDC coming up as well as a regular monthly stint serving on Grand Jury service, I needed something even more portable than the MBP. Last Fall we purchased a MBA for my wife – her first portable. She immediately fell in love with the MBA and starting using it all over mainly because of it’s excellent design and lightweight mobility. I admit that I also was fascinated with her MBA but it simply did not have the horsepower that I needed as a developer and consultant.
Fast forward to April of this year. I began to realize that so much of what I do is via VNC or remote desktop, whether for my regular work contract, accessing home resources, etc. The MBA started to seem like a more viable option. The MBP, even though only 13 inches, was too heavy to tote around everywhere. The MBA was a much better tool for ubiquity much like my iPad but with the full keyboard and notebook options that the iPad was limited to perform.
I found a 1.6 Ghz, 4GB memory, 128 GB SSD model on Apple’s refurb site for a good price. I also picked up an STM bag from Amazon for $35. The STM holds both the MBA and my iPad along with a few other essentials and is very light even loaded with all of the above hardware.
The MBA is fitting the bill perfectly and even more. I also loaded VMWare Fusion on it and it runs VM very well.
The only hesitation that I had was based on the rumor of an MBA refresh coming soon which would include Thunderbolt connectivity. However, my need was now, and not in 2 – 3 months so the decision to buy was a good one.