MacBook Air...

The MacBook Air is the newest addition to Apple's notebook product pipeline.  I am not going to attempt to do a technology review on the MacBook Air as that has already been done by so many others.  What I am going to review is the overall idea with some of the features along with my opinion.  The MacBook Air is Apple's addition to the arena of sub-notebooks.  I think that this computer market is not nearly as big as the current 15 inch to 17+ inch standard notebooks.

Apple's MacBook Air Offcial Ad

The feature that ranks highest on my chart is the multi-touch pad.  Although I think that they should have taken this technology from their iPhone further on the MacBook Air however this multi-touch pad is still new to the market. 

On the bottom of my feature chart is the fact that the MacBook Air does not come with a internal drive bay.  Apple calls this "Remote Disc".  Basically it is the same as mapping a drive from a local network PC to the another PC.  The reason I think that this feature is horrible is because most people will feel intimidated and therefore not buy the MacBook Air.  In my opinion Apple should have made the Air a little thicker and included one of their internal Super-Drives to make a more complete product.  I don't think that most people traveling would want to carry around an external drive bay and would rather opt to have a notebook that is a little thicker with the basic features.

In my opinion Apple would have made a better addition to their current product lineup by announcing at least a tablet notebook; if not a multi-touch display only notebook, such as the OMPC.  This is a topic that many others are talking about on the net and we can only hope that Apple provides what its customers want. 

If you have an opinion or would like to link a review of the MacBook Air to this post please do in the comments.

CES vs. MacWorld...

                        

As I was thinking of what to write about this week, my original plan was to try and pick one product from the CES lineup and do a virtual review.  But that is not what I decided to do.  Instead I thought that I would do a broad review  comparing CES to MacWorld.

So this is not a direct or fair comparison as the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) convention covers all things that are technology related, while MacWorld is Apple product specific.  But since Apple doesn't have a real presence at CES I think that this is how most people feel; that CES does compare to MacWorld.

Without getting to many details involved more people come to CES then they do MacWorld but that number is vastly changing as more people are buying and becoming more interested in Apple products.  If I had to choose between going to CES and MacWorld I would go to CES because there are so many categories and various products revealed that would keep my interest rather then just focusing on one brand of technology.

I think that CES is the better technology convention because they get all of the major brands as well as new and innovative products into the showroom floor.  With that said I am still interested in what MacWorld brings to the technology universe every year.

If you have any thoughts or incite into the CES vs. MacWorld comparison email me or leave a comment to this post by clicking on the comments link below this post.

My Samsung SyncMaster 22” LCD Monitor…

This is the newest addition to my desktop setup. I love having more desktop real-estate and it is said that you will be more productive if you have more space to work with; I hope that is true. As I have mentioned in previous post on G. Wade Tech Review this monitor is the Samsung SyncMaster 2220WM that gives off a very nice picture. With a glossy bezel and a LCD non-glossy screen you get the best of both worlds. I like the non-glossy screens because you don't get the reflection as if you are looking into a mirror. Even though you get an enhanced picture from a glossy screen I don't think it is worth it when you can't see parts of the screen very well because you happen to have a light on that is behind you or a window open in the background blinding you from the reflection in the monitor. This monitor has a 5 ms response time as well as both an analog and digital input. The monitor does lack some of the other more common inputs such as: composite, HDMI, S-Video, USB, and others I may be missing. Since I use other peripherals for those purposes I don't mind not having them built into the monitor.

I picked this monitor up at Best Buy on Black Friday for $200 as one of my Christmas gifts from my wife. (Thanks for the nice gift.) As I was doing my research on which monitor I wanted to get I decided on this monitor over other monitors because I wanted to add it to my other Samsung SyncMaster 720N 17". This works out great because the 22" widescreen monitor and the 17" monitor have almost the same height so when I have them next to each other they are as close to the same screen height as you can get without having two of the same monitors. The other reason that I wanted this monitor was the fact that they have the same color settings in the menu so I don't have to go through and adjust the colors to try and get them to give off the same picture.

Here are some pics of the 22" Samsung SyncMaster 2220WM:

If you have a dual monitor setup or just want to let me and the G. Wade Tech Review community know what kind of a monitor you are using leave a comment under this post.