Is the MBA the best coffee shop laptop?

I think so. It is light weight and has a nice keyboard and screen. If you're using it for Word Processing, Spreadsheets, etc. the performance is great as is battery life. I'm using it with OpenOffice.

If you need to run WinXP applications via Fusion, the MBA will heat up and battery life suffers but it works well enough for office applications.

Chat (video and voice) work great but I haven't used a bluetooth headset. I've read here that there were audio problems with headsets, not sure if this was solved.

The one downside for me is the wifi hasn't been good. I can't connect to hot spots. Not a big deal as I have an AT&T 3g card.

Regards-Michael G.

Definitely WAY COOL compared to those suitcase sized PCs that people haul into the local coffee shop. (Yesterday a woman came in with her PC and accessories in a wheeled cart. I looked around to make sure I hadn't stopped off at the airport by mistake.)

By the way, don't hog the table with the blue wheelchair symbol. Really yanks my crank when I roll over with my MBA and my Latte to find some able bodied PC drone with a cereal box sized charger, an added ten-key pad, and a seven button mouse spread out all over the only table I can use.

Of course, my MBA is so small, I can position my chair facing the PC hog, balance my Latte on the corner of the table, open the MBA on my lap, and get on-line while PC creep is still waiting for Windoze to load. If they are actually smart enough to figure out they grabbed the wrong table, I can see the cogs turning behind their eyes trying to balance guilt and shame against the hassle of packing up all that hardware to move...

Yep. MBA is the best coffee shop laptop. 😉

For sure, the best coffee shop laptop on the market. A portable is meant to be portable right? And its a Mac!... I have a Mac Mini desktop at home, and this minimalists machine is intended for travel anywhere. Here is some more advice from what I have found so far:

1) I only use the bare amount of apps, and ones that are efficient (i.e. iWork suite, no Office, and limit Java apps which tend to use up CPU). I evaluate any new software I purchase and watch it perform in activity monitor. If it is a CPU or memory hog, I find another product. So far, the apps that look more Leopard-like seem to be efficient (I guess based on cocoa?).

2) I have a small bootcamp partition setup (14 GB on a SSD 1.8 Ghz) for Windows XP. I boot into it when I need my business apps for work (Office suite, plus windows Skype version so I can still make calls when I reluctantly need to run windoze.). I also run it with Parallels in some cases, but the fans will spin up.

3) I have two changers... one at the office, and one at home. In between, I now usually go all battery for the coffee shops. Keep it simple, light and only one thing to worry about without the wires/brick... unless of course I plan to work for a long period of time or run more demanding apps which drain the battery, then I carry a charger.

"The one downside for me is the wifi hasn't been good. I can't connect to hot spots. Not a big deal as I have an AT&T 3g card."

Mind if I ask what the problem with the Wifi is when using hot spots? I've been thinking about getting a first gen MBA, but I would want to use it at the hot spots.

Thanks

I think it is :

1. I do not need to burn cd's, etc when at a cofee shop. all my movies and music are ripped to hdd. optical drive not needed.

2. I never need more than 1 usb port when at a coffee shop. just to grab files from my work usb key.

3. don't need an audio input when i am at the coffee shop.

4. I don't need to attach Firewire drives when I am at the coffee shop.

Basically - I am just listing what others see as 'shortcomings' on the MBA - but I would not find usefull anyways at a coffee shop...

I've had NO luck getting it to connect to a 802.11b/g wireless access point reliably. Yea, I can sometimes get it to connect, but it usually runs very slow and then disconnects after about 15 minutes. There are several posts about it on this forum. The only solution that worked for me was to set up a 802.11n AP using WPA and only connect 802.11n devices. That doesn't help at public hot spots.

With a 3G card, it isn't a big deal for me.I have all the updates but didn't try deleting files as recommended in one of the threads as I have it working as I need it right now.

Regards-Michael G.

I had lunch at the local cafe today. In the past both my Titanium G4 and my MBP 17 refused to connect. The router is behind an adobe wall in the kitchen.

Today I took the MBA and - wow - it connected immediately and with 5 bars.

Must be something wrong with your software or perhaps with the wifi card in your MBA. Perhaps you can take it by an Apple Store to have a genius check it out?

Did you already download the most recent updates from Software Update?

Yes, running the latest version but no I haven't taken it to Apple.

It isn't critical for me. I don't need the wifi when I'm out and use a separate access point when I'm home. Seems some people have problems, others don't similar to the overheating.

Regards-Michael G.

Ah well.... I am so OCD that my equipment has to be perfect. My MBA is a refurb and does not overheat. First thing I did when I took it out of the box was run a bunch of two-way video conferencing to make sure it did'nt warm up. My MBA has NOT sign of the problem, but I torture test it just to make sure .... A non-working element - ANY non-working element on my laptop would make me nuts.

There are fixes for the wifi connect issues, for example see:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8371580#8371580

if you ever decide you want to fix the issue, come on back. 😉

I think the problem has to due with the fact that the mba and now the new macbooks are constructed out of aluminum; which in return can interfere with connectivity. I have a late 2007 white macbook and never had any problems with connecting. I haven't been able to test out my new aluminum pro yet to see if there is a problem with connectivity as caused by the casing, but I've read other places that the casing sometimes is to be blamed with less than perfect connectivity. Hope this helps.

Ya know ....

I had a Titanium that had lousy range. My MacBook Pro 17" has better range than the Titanium, but still not great. I bought a plastic MacBook for my partner and it has much better range than either of the metal laptops.

Then I bought my MBA and I expected range to be similar to the MBP (as you guessed above).

BUT - wow - my MBA has much better range than ANY of the other laptops, even better than the plastic MacBook. So I am guessing Apple solved that particular problem ....