ThinkPad X300 owner thinking of migrating to Apple Air

[jamess]

I've recently purchased Mac Pro for my video editing and hobbies related to that. I run office and everything i need there as well. It's my secondary computer.

I own X300 and i am very pleased with it (except for the horrible screen), but yesterday's playing with my friend's MacBook Air left some doubts in my head.

Of course i don't like there's not CD (but i very very rarely need one on my x300 too), the keyboards seems worse and no detachable battery too. No HSDPA option and only one USB, these all are saying "don't go for it".

However ... I have some issues with X300 that are very handy excuse... bad screen, Vista stability when on USB dock (have 1 to 2 blues screens daily!), fan noise.

Has anyone out there owned X300 and replaced it with MB air? Or maybe does anyone have both of these and how can they compare? I know this has been an on-going debate for quite some - Thinkpadders saying GO for ThinkPad and Mac lovers saying go with mac... still i am wondering...

[jflamm]

I had a MBA for a couple months before switching to X300. I still own a MBP.

I am not particularly religious about either - both have advantages and disadvantages.

In looking at your reasoning though - you don't want to switch to MBA now because the heat and fan noise is quite a bit worse. X300 fan comes on for a few seconds and then notches down. MBA will stay on while running CPU intensive programs. My belief is that the MBA cooling is simply poorly designed and the machine simply doesn't run at its rated frequency. MBA owners are in denial about this - most Apple notebooks run too hot.

MBA screen is nicer to look at and although the keyboard is worse, it's perfectly acceptable. Stability is nice. Battery life is not as good - especially if you have two batteries on X300.

Advice: wait for the Penryn update to MBA before even considering a switch. Note the Dell E4300 is looking pretty attractive in comparison to X300.

[dr_st]

You are also complaining about USB docking stability with the X300 - do you expect it to be better with the MBA? USB "docking" is a joke and not something one should expect to use. But I doubt the MBA will be better in this department (assuming you can even connect a dock to it).