Without a doubt, this is one of the nift iest-
looking laptops we’ve ever tested. At
3 pounds and just one inch thick, it’s
slightly smaller than Toshiba’s R
(reviewed November 2007).
But while the R500 was a
capable, fully-featured
portable PC, the
MacBook Air makes
serious compromises
to maintain its petite profi le.
The most obvious sacrifi ce is the Air’s
lack of an optical drive—something other
ultraportables, including the similarly svelte
R500, manage to include. To compensate
for this lack, Apple provides a utility that
lets you use an optical drive on another
PC or Mac across a network. Performance
left something to be desired, but we were
impressed that the feature worked at all.
Unfortunately, the optical drive isn’t
the Air’s biggest omission. We’re even
more put off by this portable’s dearth of
external ports—it includes just a singleUSB port, a multi-format video-out, and a
headphone jack. No mic, no PC Card, no
modem, no Ethernet—enjoy waiting for a
multi-gigabyte file transfer using the Air’s
802.11n Wi-Fi.The Air doesn’t, however, com-
promise in terms of performance.
While the Air came in last in most
of our benchmarks, it’s more than
fast enough for typical desktop-
application use. We wouldn’t want
to convert 5GB of photos from RAW
with it, but for browsing the web,
watching movies, and checking email, it’s
plenty suffi cient.
With an Ethernet port and a couple more
USB ports, this would be a killer laptop. –W SWeighing a tad more than 4 pounds, Sony’s
Vaio SX is the heft iest laptop in the ultraport-
able category. Yet despite its larger size, the
Vaio isn’t the sturdiest small-size contender.
That’s too bad because this little rig packs killer
performance in its sexy carbon-fi ber shell—it’s
the only ultraportable we tested that includes
discrete graphics.
The Vaio delivered great benchmark
numbers—and thanks to its GeForce 8400M GS
videocard, it’s the only ultraportable that even
ran our gaming benchmarks. And unlike other
machines we’ve tested, killer performance
didn’t impact battery life; the Vaio ran our
movie playback test for more than three hours.
We’re also fond of the Vaio’s Rev A Sprint
EVDO card. It perfectly complements the
802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, gigabit Ethernet, and Blu-
etooth options. The Vaio also accommodates
both PCMCIA and ExpressCard/34 cards, if
you’d rather use your own WAN card.
On the other hand, the Vaio’s trackpad is
too damn small, and the machine feels fl imsyand poorly constructed. We suspect that
its extra pound of heft is made up en-
tirely of crapware—the Vaio ships with
a ludicrous number of useless prein-
stalled applications. We understand
the economic necessities of
subsidizing inexpensive
PCs with third-party
crapware, but
there’s no excuse
for whoring out
a notebook of this price.
The fi rst thing we’d do aft er buying this Vaio is
reinstall Windows. –W SA couple extra ports would make this gor-
geous piece of hardware even more attractive.With a sexy carbon-fi ber chassis, discrete
graphics, and three-plus hours of battery life,
the Vaio looked poised to take the ultraport-
able crown. So what happened?VERDICT$1,800, http://www.apple.com^7
MACBOOK AIRVERDICT$2,500, http://www.sony.com^7
SONY VAIO SZ PREMIUMSPECIFICATIONSCPU Intel Core 2 Duo (1.60GHz)
RAM 2GB DDR2/
HARD DRIVE -0GB, 4,200rpm
SCREEN 13.3-inch LED-backlit LCD
(12-0x-00)
LAP/CARRY WEIGHT 3 lbs./3 lbs. 6 oz.SPECIFICATIONSCPU Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 (2.50GHz)
RAM 4GB DDR2/HARD DRIVE (^) 250GB, 5,400rpm
SCREEN 13.3-inch LED-backlit LCD
(12-0x-00)
LAP/CARRY WEIGHT 4 lbs./4 lbs. 13 oz.
ULTRAPORTABLE
Apple MacBook Air
The smallest notebook we’ve ever
tested comes with sacrifi ces
Sony Vaio SZ Premium
It looks more substantial than the MacBook Air, but is just as fl awed
to convert 5GB of photos from RAW
PC Notebooks vs. MacBooks
26 | MAXIMUMPC | AUG 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com