Macbook Air vs. Ultrabook FIGHT!

What does your partner primarily want to use it for?

I am incredibly happy with my Lenovo ThinkPad X220, and with the premium screen they have it's pretty competitive. It's light, reliable, and the battery life I get out of it is unbelievable. The graphics work fine when plugged into a docking station, although the Intel 3000 I have is definitely marginal for gaming.

Excel is also subtly different between the two OS while managing to look quite similar so that thing on the tab over there on the windows version will likely be buried somewhere else on osx and vice versa.

Lum's right. While none of the ultrabooks, nice as they are, has the build quality of the MBA, you're still better of running Excel on Windows and buying a MBA to install Windows on is a great waste of money.

Unfortunately with Ultrabooks there are so many to chose from, that you have to be careful. The Zenbook is good. I can also recommend the HP Folio 13 or new Envy.

I got so sick of Excel on my MacBook that I bought a Windows laptop just for doing Office stuff. So much more sanity.

I'd say get one of the Lenovos. The Yoga 13 is solid, and if you can afford it, the X1 Carbon is very good. I have an Asus UX31A. While it's okay, it's got a few odd glitches. The keyboard isn't all that great and the HDMI port works only intermittently.

Oh yeah, Lenovo is doing some impressive stuff right now - if you want a decent powered ultrabook with tablet functionality, then take a closer look at the upcoming Helix.

I have a Lenovo Yoga 13 and I'm really happy with it. And it replaced MacBook Air 13. Just couldn't find any advantages in Mac OS by 2012.

I'll have to take a look at these new lenovos and whatnot. While I don't care about osx and usually just install linux instead, macbooks tended to have much better trackpads compared to the puny ones on windows laptops. My old 13" air is perfectly usable without a mouse.

FWIW, Linux tends to work very well with ThinkPads. (And I prefer TrackPoint(tm)-style pointing devices to either mice or trackpads, so.)

*mutter* Just don't try to use Optimus cards with Linux unless you like a lot of crying in the dark. though most of my breakage problems are the nvidia drivers. I'm running Ubuntu on a Thinkpad W520 relatively happily. It's just the video card that gives me fits (specifically, switching to use a projector is a pain in the ass due to how the Optimus shit is wired)

The sale may be due to a semi-imminent refresh of the Macbook Air, so if you're the type to suffer buyer's remorse over not having the latest shiniest thing you may want to hold off.

Rumor is MBA is slated for an update, sometime in the spring.

It probably true because I plopped down my Apple bucks (combo birthday + xmas gift card from mrs. naum) on the 13" model. I gave my 2011 11" model to my son -- and I will simply say that was the most awesome laptop I ever owned. Light as a feather, after accustomed to SSD drive, do not ever want to go back to non-SSD drive (or whatever Flash storage is in vogue). Have not played much with the new laptop, but the upgrade in graphics power (only disappointment was 2011 MBA model could not natively do AirPlay) and battery life, and larger screen enticed me to upgrade.

Big hindrance with Ultrabooks for me (besides the necessity of Windows and obligatory Linux install) is that the trackpad and gesture do not seem as polished nor as responsive as with the Mac gear.

MBA probably won't get a refresh until after the new Intel chips ship, so.. what, june/july timeframe or something?

According to macrumors, we're about 100 days away from a Macbook Air update based on the average time between previous hardware refreshes.

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#MacBook_Air

Yeah, I'd only wait if a refresh was imminent -- weeks away, not months.

I went to Best Buy and almost picked up the 13" MBA... and then I saw the new 13" Asus Zenbook Touch. I never thought I would say this, but it seemed better built than the 13" MBA. Actually, it was basically identical but the screen was far nicer. And apparently Best Buy has it on sale right now, too: $1099, lower than Amazon. When did Best Buy start having competitive prices again?

This, it's what I'm typing this on right now, excellent device. Also it has the traditional ThinkPad keyboard, before Lenovo went with all chiclets keyboards.

The IPS screen has some big flaws though: not only it there ghosting, but over time a few pale white dots are likely to appear on the matrix. Not really noticeable, but overall it ruins a great screen. You're right that it has a paltry GPU, but I prefer to play modern games on a desktop anyway, and only play classics on a laptop.

If you go the Windows route, be very careful if you pick an Ultrabook from Asus or a few others that has a very high resolution, because DPI scaling is really bad on Windows. Many applications do not scale and the fonts look thin and really ugly. As gorgeous as those 1080p screens are, I would recommend passing on them until Microsoft gets their stuff together.

I agree, if you're only interested in an 11 inch form factor. But on the 13 inch Asus ultrabooks, 1080p has only slightly higher dpi than the x220. It really looks quite good, especially in comparison with the 13" Macbook Air.

Really? The X220 or X230 would be 0.2026mm of dot pitch, and the Asus 1080p 13.3 inchers would be 0.1534mm. That's a pretty significant difference, and you will need to crank up the DPI quite a bit, which is where all the scaling/fonting problems will come.

Some have a problem with it and some don't, I guess pick it from a store with a good returns policy.

Oops, I forgot that the x220 has a >12" screen.

I meant to say that the Asus 13.3 incher is comparable to a typical 1366x768 11.6 inch screen, such as the Inspiron 11z or Macbook Air. Those have a dot pitch of 0.1878, so the Asus is only 18% smaller.

I am shopping for one of these ultrabook thingers and the three main candidates are:

Macbook Air 13.3 inch
Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 13
Samsung NP540U3C

The first two have been discussed already. Anyone have anything to offer on the Samsung? Are there other 13 inch/$1200ish ultrabooks worth considering?

My primary use will be writing. I don't plan on using the machine for gaming. Mainly I want something light as it will be moving around a lot.

I've been eying a variety of Windows 8 convertibles myself. Usual warning applies: you're paying through the nose for the privilege of underpowered hardware with a touchscreen, and the battery life is maybe 5 hours only.

That said... aside from Microsoft's Surface Pro which has a huge problem with lap operation due to its wobbly stand, two other interesting candidates are the Dell XPS 12 (AnandTech, Ars Technica) and the Sony Vaio Duo 11 (Engadget). Curiously few reviews for the Sony, I'm guessing it's the usual Sony incompetence at getting review units out.

edit: By the way, the Sony is the only model I found that has a Wacom digitizer pen like the Surface Pro. Also, it has an extension battery (with a pen dock) that should last for a whole day. Of course it's getting even heavier and more expensive if you get the extra battery pack.

Chromebook Pixel, with the caveat that "writing" had better mean "in Google Docs." If that limitation is okay, it offers a vastly better display than anything you're looking at, and build quality/keyboard/touchpad that's on par with the MBA, according to reviews. But this is definitely an unorthodox choice.

Fortunately the battery life shouldn't be a big issue for me since most of my writing will be in 1-2 hour sessions when I'm away from a power source.

The Ars Technica comments on the Sony keyboard put me off, though the Dell seems promising and I hadn't considered it before.

The Chromebook is one of those neat ideas that I will continue to admire from a safe distance. :) I do use Google Docs for some of my writing but the bulk (working on novels) is done in Scrivener, which requires an old-fashioned non-browser Windows or Mac installation.

I had an opportunity to try that keyboard and liked it well enough, though that will depend on whether you insist on a touchpad or not. I have a strong urge of techno-lust to get the maximum loadout of the Sony Vaio Duo with the extra battery pack just for the hell of it, but that's close to €2000...

It's very easy (and tempting) to bling out a machine. More ram! Bigger drive! Larger screen! But I'm sticking to my $1200 max because I'm sure I can get what I need at that price point (or lower).

I went to Best Buy and it was a bust. They had a copious number of laptops on display but precious few ultrabooks and none of the ones I'm interested in. One woman was ranting to a sales clerk about Windows 8 being on every machine. She is in for a long, sad computing future.

I braved the Apple store and looked over the two Macbook Airs. The 11 inch model is small enough to be kind of adorable. Both of them radiate that sexy Apple 'buy me' scent. I'm leaning toward the 13.3 inch model.

If you're okay with OSX, I think it's hard to go wrong with the MBA for your purposes. It's got a very good keyboard and great trackpad, and the display is above average for the device class (though not as good as the Asus).

Agreed on the display. The difference in resolution is enough to warrant the larger model (plus having a larger SSD and better battery life ain't bad, either).

As to OS X, I'm largely indifferent to it. I've never liked Apple's use of the menu bar for everything (I prefer Windows' using the task bar for everything) but I've used OS X enough to be comfortable with it. And they fixed the weird folder copying behavior that was mentioned in jeffd's thread.

Ned, I had a MacBook Air 13 and sold it and now have an IdeaPad Yoga 13. The Air was great, but I found myself running Windows on it so often it seemed wasteful. Plus Apple's Windows drivers suck.

I really love the Yoga. I had a bum unit when I first bought it, but after replacing it, I'm very happy with it. For a total of about $1,200, I was able to buy the $999 base model, bump the ram to 8GB, and add a second SSD to bump storage to 384GB. (There's a second, open SSD slot.) It's light, the screen's much better than the 13" Air's (the Yoga's a 1600x900 IPS display), and I get about 5.5 hours for writing/browsing style usage. (Obviously less for games.)

And the tablet mode is nice for when I sit back to read a long PDF or futz around with Civ V's touch update.

Thanks to your post, I will seek out a Yoga this weekend for some hands-on. Did you add the extra ram later or at the time of purchase?

I added it myself later. The RAM is right under the keyboard, so it's easy to install. The only trick is sliding the keyboard back down into place firmly. Also, there's some double-stick tape under the keyboard and in my case it lost a bit of stickiness, so I added a few new strips of 3M double-sided scotch tape and the keyboard is solid again.

The SSD is more of a task -- you have to remove the top of the laptop and remove a couple of ribbon cables from fragile connectors. Not too hard -- I did it three times due to having to return my first Yoga -- but it takes patience and care.