General Forum

Re: The WOW effect...

The Beonic Man — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:57:53 GMT

GuyHui :

Thanks Simon for your long and detailed feedback. Now I understand.
Guy

My pleasure!!!

Re: The WOW effect...

GuyHui — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:12:17 GMT

Thanks Simon for your long and detailed feedback. Now I understand.

Guy

Re: The WOW effect...

The Beonic Man — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 08:20:18 GMT

GuyHui :
The Beonic Man:
Do keep us up to date with how it is. I have always liked Apple for their designs but often found them to be unreliable so I would be interested to hear how well it functions.
Simon.
Hello Simon,
I thought you were pleased with your new iMac Alu ?
What do you find unreliable concerning Apple products ?
BTW, that's not a good news to realize that the MacBookAir's battery is not removable, like in the iPod series.
That's none sense for me.
Cheers,
Guy

Hi Guy,

The iMac I bought went back to the shop for a full refund (which I had to fight for using the legal system) because I encountered one problem after another with it from day one. I am not going to go into it all again now because I can't be bothered, I have no interest and it's a bad memory best forgotten. It wasn't the product so much that put me off the brand but the attitude of the staff I encountered when I was buying and when I was returning. The staff were extremely arrogant apart from one guy, who was actually very pleasant, and I told him and thanked him personally for that. The manager was the most arrogant of all them. In fact, I found him to be a complete idiot. His lack of customer service skills, arrogance and general overall attitude created a very uncomfortable environment in his shop from the moment you walk in the door. This does not give you the confidence or pleasure in wanting to spend your money their. Ironically, I got chatting to another customer who was returning a product and had overheard my conversation with the manager. He mentioned to me that he related completly because he felt exactly the same every time he came in. Funny that.

You need to understand something about me Guy. It is not the product for me, no matter how good it might be (and many Apply products are innovative and very good), it is the customer service received. It is ALWAYS this without exception. I am very much swayed by the person I am talking to and if they are polite, approachable, friendly, professional and courteous then they will get my money every time and I will happily hand it over and leave the shop with a very good feeling. I am constantly amazed at how so few businesses understand this very basic concept about business.

The best example I can give is to mention the B&O shop in Bath. The manager's name is Nick and he uses this forum. I am sure he will come accross this post and it's great if he does. Nick understands customer service and business 100%. This was apparent from the first day I spoke to him and I knew immediately that I wanted to buy my products from their. He went out of his way to offer me the best service possible and that counts for a lot. He employs a staff team that operate on the same level and I cannot fault any of them - the very occasional sarcastic comment from one of the younger guys (you know who you are ) but young people need to test boundaries as they mature into more professional individuals and learn to respect others so I understand and allow for that.

The experience for the customer is superb and I would highly recommend Bath evey single time. Not only do they offer what I expect from a shopping experience but they very often exceed my expectations. They stand out way above 99% of retail outlets I use and this says a lot about them. It is the way you are spoken to, treated and looked after as a customer that counts. Nick and his team understand this.

I deliberately offer this glowing appraisal because it is based on my honest and sincere opinion about them.

Simon.

Re: The WOW effect...

Alex — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:40:36 GMT

mbee:
linder:
Thanks for the encouragement. I do have another Mac which is my main computer at home. The MacBook Air will be for traveling and for managing iTunes music and photos which are stored on a remote hard drive.
Hi Linder,
I was thinking of doing so with my iTunes library, but what happens when you launch iTunes without the drive? If there isn't any issue like error messages saying that iTunes can't find the music library, that seems great!

It gives you an error, stating it cannot find the iTunes library. It will then ask you if you want to choose an existing library in a different location, or create an entirely new one.

I run two libraries, one on the hard drive IN my laptop (which is only 120 gb, so not really enough for an iTunes library + apps + OS etc...) and my complete library on a 750 gb external FireWire drive. When I want to switch from the external one to the internal one, iTunes throws an error with the hard drive disconnected and I can choose the internal one. When I want to go from the internal to external library, I you hold down ALT (on Macs anyway, dunno about PCs) and it asks you the same 'create new library or choose existing one?' question, to which I browse to my external HDD and choose the library on there...

Re: The WOW effect...

Craig — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:30:57 GMT

Very nice looking piece of kit IMO. Saw it on the MSN homepage first.

Craig

Re: The WOW effect...

linder — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:56:18 GMT

mbee:
linder:
Thanks for the encouragement. I do have another Mac which is my main computer at home. The MacBook Air will be for traveling and for managing iTunes music and photos which are stored on a remote hard drive.
Hi Linder,
I was thinking of doing so with my iTunes library, but what happens when you launch iTunes without the drive? If there isn't any issue like error messages saying that iTunes can't find the music library, that seems great!

Salut mbee,

In iTunes, open preferences, advanced, general, and then change the location of the music library which would be the remote disc. It will find the music, photos etc. using your local network. You can have multiple music directories that can be consolidated. You could have a remote disc for example that is a 1 or 2 TB drive which would hold a lot of music, photos, videos. Because you will have a lot of disc space, you can rip the CDs at a higher bit rate resulting in better sound.

I will be putting my CDs in a box and then into storage. Someday in the distant future they will be found by a person who will wonder what the CDs were used for. Ha!

Re: The WOW effect...

mbee — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 08:17:37 GMT

linder:
Thanks for the encouragement. I do have another Mac which is my main computer at home. The MacBook Air will be for traveling and for managing iTunes music and photos which are stored on a remote hard drive.

Hi Linder,

I was thinking of doing so with my iTunes library, but what happens when you launch iTunes without the drive? If there isn't any issue like error messages saying that iTunes can't find the music library, that seems great!

Re: The WOW effect...

GuyHui — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 07:55:53 GMT

The Beonic Man:
Do keep us up to date with how it is. I have always liked Apple for their designs but often found them to be unreliable so I would be interested to hear how well it functions.
Simon.

Hello Simon,

I thought you were pleased with your new iMac Alu ?
What do you find unreliable concerning Apple products ?

BTW, that's not a good news to realize that the MacBookAir's battery is not removable, like in the iPod series.
That's none sense for me.

Cheers,

Guy

Re: The WOW effect...

dilznik — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 07:19:24 GMT

soundproof:
Hey, I've already stated it's ideal for traveling, but I do miss the optical drive. Read my sentence again - I like to pick up CDs and DVDs when traveling - I have oodles of interesting films and music from other nations that are unavailable where I live, picked up in this fashion.
But it's a minor quibble, and they sacrificed the drive because they wanted to make it portable. I do see a problem, though: I've sometimes had to use the startup system DVD to fix a problem. Now that you either need to have that as a separate, or be able to connect to another Mac, you may find that bothersome ...
At any rate - gotta love Apple's products.

Ahhhh okay. Missed that part.

Re: The WOW effect...

soundproof — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 06:50:33 GMT

dilznik:
soundproof:
As stated above, I miss the optical drive. One of my guilty pleasures when traveling is picking up CDs and DVDs that make the time spent in hotel rooms not as wasted.

Don't you rip all your DVDs and CDs onto your mini anyway? Just copy the data onto the Air and you're set. You save space by not carrying DVDs and CDs and you save battery by not needing to spin a disk you're watching.

Hey, I've already stated it's ideal for traveling, but I do miss the optical drive. Read my sentence again - I like to pick up CDs and DVDs when traveling - I have oodles of interesting films and music from other nations that are unavailable where I live, picked up in this fashion.

But it's a minor quibble, and they sacrificed the drive because they wanted to make it portable. I do see a problem, though: I've sometimes had to use the startup system DVD to fix a problem. Now that you either need to have that as a separate, or be able to connect to another Mac, you may find that bothersome ...

At any rate - gotta love Apple's products.

Re: The WOW effect...

dilznik — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 06:28:42 GMT

I think a lot of you are missing the target audience for the Air. It's for people who travel a ton and have another computer at home. How often do you honestly use your DVD drive in your laptop if you've got another computer at home? You can load apps through another computer's drive. And if you absolutely need one, it's 100 euros, small as hell, and burns dual-layer DVDs. I appreciate them not including it because a) it keeps the cost down and b) it allows them to make a thinner laptop.

How often do you plug your laptop into ethernet? You guys make it sound like you're driving here and there and doing massive amounts of network troubleshooting on other people's routers or something. And if you are, guess what? You're not the market they're looking to sell this thing to! Go buy an MBP! Why do you thinking they're calling it the AIR?! They didn't call it the MacBook Hella Cables did they?

And this:

soundproof:
As stated above, I miss the optical drive. One of my guilty pleasures when traveling is picking up CDs and DVDs that make the time spent in hotel rooms not as wasted.

Don't you rip all your DVDs and CDs onto your mini anyway? Just copy the data onto the Air and you're set. You save space by not carrying DVDs and CDs and you save battery by not needing to spin a disk you're watching.

Personally I'm not going to buy it (yet) because A) buying rev 1 of anything comes back to haunt me and 2) Wait 10 months and the hard drive will be way bigger.

Re: The WOW effect...

Peter — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 06:00:15 GMT

I think the remote is an extra - £9.99 so not exactly a deal breaker! I will wait till the flash memory increases a bit - about 100GB seems better and I have no problems about having an external disc drive. However will need to see one in the flesh to see if it really is worth twice a MacBook.

Re: The WOW effect...

moxxey — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 05:44:04 GMT

soundproof:
I think it's perfect if you travel a lot - light, slim and powerful
I don't understand the "No Frontrow" above, that's included in Leopard???

Not sure about that! It has a 4200rpm parallel drive. That's slow. It's the same drive in your iPod Classic. Indeed, the drive can be the achilles heel of any laptop. A MBP is only $200 more expensive and is a far better laptop. Indeed, I'd go to the refurbished store and get a MBP, which will be cheaper than the Air.

Frontrow is included as part of Leopard, yes.

Re: The WOW effect...

soundproof — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:48:42 GMT

I think it's perfect if you travel a lot - light, slim and powerful. I find myself connecting to an Ethernet cable maybe once a month, which means I don't miss that connector not being built in (and there's a dongle you can use).

As stated above, I miss the optical drive. One of my guilty pleasures when traveling is picking up CDs and DVDs that make the time spent in hotel rooms not as wasted.

I don't understand the "No Frontrow" above, that's included in Leopard???

Re: The WOW effect...

moxxey — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:47:47 GMT

Puncher:
As always you pays your money and you makes your choice - is this the one - or not! - always a personal opinion.

I think that's a little wide-reaching. To be fair, most of us have the money to justify a MB Air, but for me it's just not quite right. A bit expensive for what you get in return (compared to, say, the MBP or MacBook) but, worse, a tad too wide for me. I really would want a true sub-notebook. This seems to be a real laptop, just lighter. As someone said on another board, at the moment the bad points outweigh the positives.