gizmodo macbook air battlemodo

Been reading Adam Frucci’s “Battlemodo” comparing five laptops in the same price range as the MacBook Air. Besides the MBA, he had the Dell XPS M1330, the Toshiba Portege R500, the Fujitsu LifeBook S2210 and the Sony Vaio TZ150N. All of these notebooks are under four pounds and are defined as “ultraportables.”

Side-by-side these other four laptops, it’s obvious the MacBook Air severely suffers on the storage department. Using only a 18-inch PATA hard disk with spin speed of 4100 rpm, it is years behind the storage technology used by the other four (all 5400 rpm). Of course, Apple provides an SSD (solid state) option for the MBA but so does Dell, Toshiba and the Sony.

If I take it that Apple will be marketing their ultraportable to the usual market for ultraportables, the business users. This is crucial because business users are always at work and saving their work frequently. They would be on an airport lounge or on a train working on their spread sheets or Word documents. The 4100 rpm PATA of the MBA isn’t exactly the ideal tool for these people.

Yes, I don’t think the Adam Frucci’s comparison table is fair. If the MacBook Air had the same SATA HDD it wouldn’t have been a fair comparison at all, even with the non-user-replaceable battery.

Any thoughts?

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