The Air's looks can't be denied, but its performance and expandability are whole other matters.

The MacBook Air is a super-slim ultraportable laptop computer that you
can slip into very thin spaces. Like anything else that Apple
crafts, the Air's industrial design is phenomenal. But its beauty is little
more than skin deep.Miraculously, the Air houses a 13.3-inch, 1280-by-800-pixel
display; a roomy keyboard; and a double-wide, multitouch trackpad within
its petite, 0.75-inch-thick frame. But aside from a headphone jack, a USB
port, and a mini-DVI port, it's not very well equipped. It lacks an optical
drive, and to connect to a network via ethernet, you must purchase a $29
USB adapter.

Starting at $1700, you're paying a lot for the Air's style. At that price, the Air comes with a traditional, 80GB platter-based hard drive, but for an extra $1000, you can get a 64GB solid state drive. That raises the Air's price to that of the much-better-equipped Lenovo ThinkPad X300.

The Air's anodized brushed-aluminum casing is cool to the touch, and even the most anti-Mac person can't help but appreciate it. The gorgeous keyboard's cut-out key design is not only unique, it provides huge keys that feel great to the touch. They are also amply spaced so that you won't find yourself bumbling over hitting the wrong keys.

You won't have trouble seeing the keys in dark rooms, either, because thanks to an ambient light sensor, the Air adds a subtle background glow to the keyboard when it gets dark. That feature works in the preinstalled Mac OS, of course, but not in Vista.

In the Mac OS, the enormous touchpad adorning the laptop's bottom recognizes multitouch commands, much as the iPhone's interface does--use two fingers pinching inward to zoom in, or stroke across the top to navigate pages, and so on. The feature is neat to see in action, but I'd consider it a bigger deal if Synaptics hadn't already delivered drivers that provide somewhat similar functionality for many Windows-based trackpad-based notebooks.

Despite having a 1.6-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo L7500 (that's a relatively powerful CPU for an ultraportable), the Air scored behind some of the ultraportable notebooks in its 3-pound weight class--even ones that had slower processors. After we installed Apple's Boot Camp software and Windows Vista, the Air earned a 57 on our WorldBench 6 tests. Lenovo's ThinkPad X300, a business-oriented notebook, has a lower-powered CPU (a 1.2-GHz Core 2 Duo L7100), and yet scored a 64 on WorldBench--a significant 12 percent difference. You might suspect that the Air's being a Mac might have something to do with it--and perhaps it did, but previous Apple notebooks haven't had any performance issues on WorldBench, and in fact, for a time a MacBook Pro held the title of the fastest notebook we'd tested.

We also ran into some initial speed bumps with the Air (specifically, getting hardware-related function keys to work, such as those for the volume and brightness controls), but Apple's Boot Camp utility resolved some of the stickiest problems. However, this lightweight is light on run times: In our lab tests, the Air's battery lasted for 2.5 hours of operation. And because of its closed-case design, you can't swap in a new battery. So, what at first seems a godsend if you're a frequent flyer will quickly ground you--unless, of course, you fly first-class on those planes now offering power outlets.

Ultimately, though, the air is a victory of industrial design and single-minded purpose. It has decent performance for an ultraportable, but few standout features to speak of beyond the superficial. And yet, I still can't help wanting to stop and touch it.

-Darren Gladstone PC World

Admin

Storing your entire digital life on a PC or laptop has never been easier. However, keeping your treasured memories,digital entertainment, and crucial documents in one place also means you're in constant danger of losing it all in the blink of an eye. That's why protecting your data with regular backups is as important as ever:

1. Without a reliable backup, data loss is painful, costly, and often permanent:
Your data isn't just a bunch of electronic bits, it's your life! And you could lose it all in an instant. Hard drives crash, laptops disappear,people delete things they shouldn't have...it happens all the time. Sure, you can spend the time and money to download all your favorite MP3's and TV shows again. But what about your digital photos, Home Movies,Financial Documents and college term papers? Without a backup of your irreplaceable data and memories,once it's gone, it's gone for good.

2. Viruses, worms, and malware are a constant threat: As if hardware failure and theft weren't enough to worry about,
malicious code can also wreak havoc on your data. No virus scanner is 100% effectiv and it just takes a single infected file to compromise an entire machine. During a successful infection viruses and malware can corrupt files and render data inaccessible.

3. Restoring data after a loss is a huge hassle:
Without a solid backup and restore plan in place, getting back on your feet after losing a hard drive can take an ternity. Unless your idea of fun is spending countless hours re-installing your operating system and programs, restarting avorite music and movies all over again, taking the time to make a backup copy is well worth the investment. In a pinch, rofessional data recovery services may be able to salvage data from a failed or corrupted hard disk using specialized software or by repairing the drive in a clean room environm- ent. However, the cost of these services often run into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars and success is not guaranteed. When it comes to protecting your data, an ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure.

4. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best:
Food,fire,earthquake,tornado,tsunami-disaster recovery isn't the most pleasant thing to think about but it is important.
Ensuring your data is safe, ideally with an offsite backup, is a good way to protect yourself and your loved ones when
Mother Nature lets loose. When the dust clears it'll be nice to have one less thing to worry about.
5. The backup drive isn't just good for backups:
External hard drives make great backup devices, but they have other benefits as well.For Example, they can provide additional storage capacity when you run out of space on your laptop or desktop PC. They're also a convenient way to share files with friends and family.Also, compact mobile drives make it easy to bring your digital life with you on the road.

Now that you know why backup is so important,its time to find out how to make it happen.A simple way to double-up your data is by purchasing an external hard drive to store a spare copy of your digital life.

Direct-attached external hard drives connect to your PC or Mac over a USB, FireWire, or eSATA cable connection.These include ultra-compact mobile drives that can fit into your backpack,briefcase,or purse to let you take your data on the road. If you need greater capacity, desktop drives are less portable but can store
up to 1TB of data or more.
Network-attached storage (NAS) drives.

are simply external hard drives that connect to your computer over your home network. That means a single drive can be sed to back up and share data with multiple PCs on the network simultaneously.
Network-attached storage drives are also great for small businesses looking to share data over a LAN in a workgroup setting.
Many direct-attached and network-attached drives include backup software to help you locate the important files on your PC that you should be backing up. You can also use these programs to schedule automatically recurring backup sessions so you won't have to remember to run them on your own.
Sometimes you need to replace more than just individual files and folders.For examaple, if you lose your computer's primary hard drive you'll also need to replace your operating system, applications, and bookmarked favorites. That can take forever! Make sure you look for features that enable the entire hard drive to be recovered, also known as bare-metal restore capability.Also keep in mind that drive makers often brand their own versions of this technology under their own trade names.
It's very important for external drives, especially mobile drives, to employ password protection and strong encryption
to keep your data from getting into the wrong hands in case your drive is lost or stolen.
Online backup is another way to keep a
backup copy of your data in a safe location in case your home or office is struck by a natural disaster. But keep in mind that backing up and restoring your data from an online service usually takes much longer than a direct or network attached drive. Unlike drives connected over a USB or Ethernet interface, online backup transfer speeds are limited by the bandwidth of your internet service provider. For maximum data protection, it's a good idea to
use both.

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