While the iPhone gets all the glory, the coolest thing from Cupertino is the MacBook Air. I can’t tell you how many times I have been stopped at the airport or café because of this laptop. With all the coolness, there are flaws and annoyances to over come. Here are some tips I came up with for those of you planning the unusual of running Vista on the MacBook Air
1.Get Back Some Space
The max hard drive space on the MacBook Air is a pathetic 80 gigs. Thus if you plan on running Vista with Boot Camp, it is just not enough particularly if you have a sizeable media library. So what you need to do when you first get your MacBook Air is uninstall as many apps on the Mac OS along with their accompanying files. Uninstalling apps like the iLife suite along with all the iDVD and Garageband templates will save you a ton of space you will need when its time to set your partition size.
2.There is a reason it is not called a laptop anymore
Forget putting this thing on your lap. It heats up so much, It will burn you in minutes. So consider getting a table like this. Now what if you are on the go? The Targus Laptop Portable LapDesk is a perfect solution. It comfortably sits on your lap and will dissipate all the heat and more importantly, it allows you to use a mouse
3.USB blues
Worried about the one usb port? You can get a usb hub like this when ever you need to connect multiple peripherals to your MacBook Air.
4.Back Lit keyboard blues
Keyboard illumination or Back lighting on the MacBook Air sometimes does not work on Vista. So do the following: Place both of your hands across the top of the screen as shown here to force it on. Note, you might have to keep your hold across the top a shown in the image for a few seconds even after it turns on.
5.Leopardish U.I.
If you love the Leopard desktop look and feel, you can pretty much duplicate it on Vista
by simply downloading the Leopard wallpaper here. Then to get a dock like the Leopard, you can get ObjectDock for Windows by Stardock.
Nice article. :)
On the heating issue though, I've finally found a solution for it!
It's called CoolBook (www.coolbook.se), it's a few dollars, and it actually works like a charm.
Basically it "underclocks" your CPU, for example when your laptop's not plugged into a charger, so it won't become so damn hot.
Another piece of software worth mentioning is InsomniaX, which pretty much allows you to close the lid without OS X going to sleep (you do have to reduce the brightness to 0%, though).
Posted by: Dids | April 02, 2009 at 11:57 AM
Mr Nerd,
Nice Blog you have here. I use a MAcbook Pro, nearly bought the air, was depressed when i read the specs, and decided against it.
Just like you, the only problem i have with it, is the heating of the bottom, but I guess thats why its called a notebook instead of a laptop.
The good news is I got the SMC Firmware Update 1.0, and it sorta fixed the issue.
Posted by: Kayode Muyibi | July 22, 2008 at 06:04 AM
Nice Article!
Posted by: Lutfar Rahman Nirjhar | July 07, 2008 at 06:16 AM