MacBook Air first impressions

So, we were lucky enough to get one of the first MacBook Airs delivered to us on Monday.

First impression: holy crap, this thing is an amazing feat of engineering.  It's more of an appliance than a laptop; it exudes the same kind of feeling as an iPhone.  It's a purpose-created device, not a general purpose computer.

Speed?  Yeah, it's not the speed demon a new MacBook Pro is.  But I'm not at all sure that matters.  With 2gb of RAM you get decent perf even with occasional use of VMWare or Parallels.  I do wish I could throw 4gb into it, though, which would be my only real complaint.

For a machine to drag around an airport, or to carry to a cafe and hang out, it's truly wonderful. It's also decent as a developer's machine; no it doesn't compile things as fast as an 8-core Mac Pro but I can't easily carry one of those in my bag.

BTW, all the nonsense about EVDO USB modems not fitting is truly nonsense.  My Sprint Novatel U727 fits just fine in the side slot, no extender cable needed.

My biggest criticism: no Firewire port.  Not for the inability to import video; but for the lack of Firewire target disk mode, which always gets a "wow" from PC users and is truly a lifesaver when you need to rescue something off a machine.