We purchased a Macbook Air two years ago and unfortunately it was a lemon right out of the box. Almost immediately there were problems with pixels on the screen going out in large vertical bands, over-heating, sluggish performance. We purchased it for our son to use during extended travel in China, reasoning that the light weight would be a plus in these circumstances. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't have any service in China so he was unable to get the problems fixed.
When he returned from China we took the Air into Apple for repairs. That was the beginning of a long cycle of multiple repairs and the nightmare of dealing with Apple service. I've never encountered so many frustrations with a computer company. Perhaps if you've ever had any serious problems with an Apple product you might know what I'm talking about.
It seems that other reviewers have been pleased with their Air, so it is entirely possible that our experience was the exception rather than the rule. However, a lemon should be caught by Apple's quality control process BEFORE it goes out the door, before it gets into an unfortunate customer's hands -- and that didn't happen in this case.
Some things a potential buyer should be aware of... The Air is basically a stripped down computer, with things such as a CD/DVD drive not included, in order to reduce the weight. But you still need these components. By the time I had purchased the additional items, including the expensive CD/DVD drive, the total package not only came close to $3000, but weighed significantly more than my small, light weight Sony which is a fully loaded computer, including DVD drive and extended life battery.
Finally, from our experiences with trying to get the Air repaired, we learned that many of the internal components, including the hard drive, are non-standard and not easily replaced when they go bad. When my Sony died after 5 years, I was able to remove the hard drive, a miniaturized Toshiba, and transfer it to an external case, enabling me to continue using my data with another computer. Not so with the Air. When the Air died recently, although still under the extended warranty, Apple was unable to offer any assistance in removing the hard drive. Their service dept. said that the Air hard drive is non-standard and that Apple doesn't service it at all and that it can't be removed. We gave up on Apple and took the Air to a local PC lab that was able to remove the hard drive and transfer the data to a new device which can be used externally.
To be fair, we've had other Apple products that have performed well and that we've been mostly happy with. Now, however, the frustration level, not to mention time and expense, in dealing with the Macbook Air and Apple service has turned us off to Apple forever. We'll be sticking to PCs from now on. Our Air, which still has more than a year of warranty on it, has totally died and we've dumped it for an Asus. Check them out, they get excellent reviews (rated highest for reliability), have incredible battery life (10-14 hours), have an amazing warranty, and they make some very lightweight models (the UL series).Get more detail about Apple MacBook Air MC234LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop.
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