You’ve all heard about the MacBook Air by now, I’m sure. Bad name aside (MacBook Air? Seriously? Is this the best they could come up with?), there are some who wonder who would buy it, or whether it’ll be a flop.

Yes, people will buy it. No it won’t be a flop.

First, let’s quickly look at who might benefit from something like the MacBook Air:

Students

Having been a student not too long ago, I can tell you that hauling books from class to class all day is no fun. After a while, you feel every single pound, every single ounce of what you’re carrying. Sure, two pounds doesn’t seem like much weight, but when you’re loaded down with books, you’ll take whatever weight reduction you can get. There are a couple drawbacks, however. Since it’s a 13.3-inch screen like the MacBook, it won’t take up any less desk space, which is disappointing and makes it a little less pleasant to use on the tiny desks in lecture halls (I’d love it if Apple brought back something the size of the 12” PowerBook G4, but so it goes). Also, the lack of an Ethernet jack is a drawback, since dormitories typically have Ethernet jacks in every room, and some schools may have regulations against the use of WiFi networks in the dorms. Also, the MacBook Air would not make an ideal primary computer, so it should only be considered by students who can afford to own two computers.

Business travelers…
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By far, the biggest news to come out of Macworld Expo so far has been Apple’s announcement of the MacBook Air.  Almost everything about this computer was rumored ahead of time, including the name, but as with most Apple products, knowing about a product is nowhere near the same as actually seeing it in person and using it.  The question on plenty of people’s minds, now that the product is out in the open, is what’s it like?

The MacBook Air certainly lives up to its name.  At only 3 pounds, the Air is certainly light enough to lift and carry around with one hand when the computer is open.  This computer will allow people to walk around and use it at the same time much more easily and readily than other laptops.  And with a full-size 13” screen, you still get the same experience as you would with a different laptop.

But how does it work?  Well, like a Mac.  In case you don’t know already, the Air features a 1.6 or 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2 GB of RAM standard.  This gives you plenty of juice for all but the most grueling tasks, including Photoshop, Aperture, Final Cut Pro, or even Mathematica.  However, you may feel constrained by the hard disk capacity.  To shrink the computer to such a small size, Apple has included as standard the same 80 GB, 1.8” hard drive found in the iPod Classic.  The Air can also carry a 64…
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An interesting topic has come up in my online Flash course, and with Macworld Expo looming, what better time to tackle the subject; namely, what web trends do I predict?  Such a broad topic can not be answered briefly, as it covers a multitude of issues and gives no specific time frame.  However, these are my opinions, speculations and predictions on where the Internet is headed, along with the future of technology, media, and society.

The Here and Very Soon

Over the short term, we will see a continued increase in “social networking,” as is termed numerous sites, trends, and methods for sharing data.  Social networking has evolved over the years as the Internet has matured; we’ve gone from Usenet lists to IRC and IM to message boards to blogs, profile-based sites like MySpace or Friendster, and Twitter.  We have vast worlds that take place entirely within the realm of games, including World of Warcraft and Second Life.  Sooner or later, someone will come up with the next big means of communication with random strangers from around the world, and social skills in the real world will further diminish, especially among the younger child, teenage and young adult crowds.  What technologies and methodologies this new modus operandi will specifically are not important, only that it allows people to connect with each other in some subtly unique way.

We will also see a slow but steady decline in information-gathering, news reporting, and overall social commentary.  Reputable news agencies, though sufficiently numerous today,…
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Some people don’t think Windows Vista sucks, but I respectfully disagree. I think Windows Vista is a horrible operating system that is incredibly inefficient, unproductive, and requires the end user go through too many hassles and jump through too many hoops to accomplish basic tasks. What’s worse is that Microsoft spent billions of dollars and years and years developing it. It should be spectacular, or at least decent. It’s not.

I’m going to cover several common tasks that a typical end user goes through while using a computer. These typical tasks include changing the settings of your system, printing, opening and saving files, browsing for files, searching, switching between documents and applications, and accessing files and applications in the file browser. A typical user will do all of these many times in a given day.

In this first section I’ll cover using the control panels to change your system settings. End users sometimes find themselves wanting to access the system’s settings for various reasons on any given day. They might want to change the refresh rate of their monitor, or just check to see what its value is, or they might want to check to see what their IP address is. People typically have volume controls on their computer hardware, especially on laptops, but they sometimes need to access the sound control panel as well. How easy is it to find and use these control panels in Vista? How does Vista fare in this regard? Terribly. In many ways, Windows is…
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I’m exhausted, the winter here in Kentucky is eating away my constitution to live. On top of this I lack all funding for Christmas gifts for anyone, and a merry Christmas is not in the question. I miss the summer, I miss the life, I miss being able to drive my bike to the park and simply ride for hours and hours until I run out of water and just want to die because I’m so thirsty. I miss the orange of the air, I miss it all.

Ive been lacking the motivation to write as of late. I still lack the motivation; the only reason I write now is to call DT my home. I have been here two years, writing and reviewing, and if it’s up to me I’ll be here two more. In all of my two years, never have I seen such a depression for blogs. All over the blogosphere, blogs are dropping like flies, and forums are dropping even faster. Today I look at DT, hoping to breathe my depressed air into it and bring its shuddering frame back into a rhythmic life. Or maybe I’m just insane.

The site has been through a lot because of me; I netted us the worst partnership of a lifetime. Geeks.com decided to start sending us computer parts for us to review, and as soon as they did, there was a disagreement, and it was gone. Along with it went the loss of any chance I would get to…
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