Oh, and comes with these: "WildTangent® Game Console, TOSHIBA Face Recognition, Microsoft® Silverlight™ , TOSHIBA Bulletin Board™, TOSHIBA Disc Creator, TOSHIBA Service Station, Norton Internet Security™ 2011 (30-day trial), TOSHIBA Recovery Disk Creator, TOSHIBA Web Camera Application, TOSHIBA HDD/SSD Alert, TOSHIBA BookPlace™, Intel® Wireless Display Technology (WiDi 2.1), TOSHIBA Media Controller, TOSHIBA PC Health Monitor, Microsoft® Windows Live Essentials including Photo Gallery, Messenger, Mail, Writer and Movie Maker., Microsoft® Windows Media Player 12, TOSHIBA ReelTime™, TOSHIBA eco Utility™, Google® Chrome, TOSHIBA Hard Drive Impact Sensor (3D sensor), Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Reduced functionality Word® and Excel® with advertising)*, TOSHIBA App Place"
Which is a disadvantage in itself.
I also don't think just providing a list of installed programs is not much of an argument. Note that many of those 'applications' exist in OSX, but Apple is just smart enough not to list them as installed apps. That list includes a basic install of Excel and Word (very useful for many people), Google Chrome, Media Player, Movie Maker, etc. etc.
Do you fault Apple for including QuickTime, iTunes, Safari, iMovie in their products?
it is about the TOSHIBA crapware. those are non-Microsoft components, and it shows. same on pretty much any other big manufacturers stuff - LENOVO, HP,...
as if win7 didn't provide all these features natively - as OS X seemingly does.
(I have no idea what Toshiba's uses).
My new 2011 13" MBA is a real pleasure to use.
Thicker: I'll give you this - that said I've always wondered why this feature matters. Sure it looks nice, but from a usability standpoint - well, in my entire life of using laptops, I have found laptops too heavy, but never too thick. Honest question: why is it worth the premium - and loss of user customization - to be so thin?
Design: Magsafe: Agreed. Bluetooth: Agreed, but dongles are extremely cheap Thunderbolt: An issue, but so few devices use it currently that there is a good chance it won't be that much of a problem over the life of the laptop.
Unibody: Debatable if that is even a good thing. I searched in vain for studies that show a unibody laptop is sturdier or more durable; do you know of any? I am guessing that any fall strong enough to start making a difference would already be enough to crack the screen. The huge downside is the difficulty of opening the thing up (no replaceable battery?!!)
Multi-touch: The toshiba site claims "multi touch control". I have no idea what that means, though I doubt it is to the level of what os/x offers.
Crapware: This really isn't that much - most of those are useful programs. That said, I'll admit I completely ignore such lists, as I just reformat and install Linux anyway. :)
That said, one can fault the air as well when comparing it:
-Shorter battery life
-No replaceable battery (making shorter battery life even worse)
-Significantly slower processor (1.7 versus 2.4 ghz)
-Less RAM (4GB versus 6)
-Impossible to swap hard-drives
-No dvd drive
-Based on amazon's current pricing, costs $500 more. ($800 vs. $1300). (http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Portege-R835-P81-13-3-Inch-Lap... versus http://www.amazon.com/Apple-MacBook-MC965LL-13-3-Inch-VERSIO...)
While they aren't the same laptop, they are closely spec'd with different trade-offs. In reviews, Toshiba's is often compared to the Air. (http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/toshiba-portege-r835-p56x/45... http://www.pcmag.com/article/print/263220). The R835 is certainly an example of a company producing a competing product to Apple without much quality loss but at a vastly lower (40% cheaper w/out SSD; 27% w/ SSD) price.
Well, we're talking about Air style laptops here. Extreme portability is kind of the requirement, and thin helps.
I also see the loss of "user customization" as a good thing, I want the laptop to be "fire and forget", like those distraction free writing environment.
> Unibody: Debatable if that is even a good thing. I searched in vain for studies that show a unibody laptop is sturdier or more durable; do you know of any?
No, but I've owned many plastic laptops --including Toshiba's and Apple's-- and a few metal ones, and it feels obviously sturdier at hand. Remove points of failure, such as joints, is a good thing. I had many laptops "break", or slightly open, at the joints between sides, something that cannot happen in a MBP.
> Shorter battery life
I'm not sure about this. Apple tends to report expected battery life damn accurately, while other companies are off by 20-30% or even more (based on tons of reviews I've read). Could this be the case here?
> -Less RAM (4GB versus 6)
The specs on the cnet page say 4 GB, ??
> -No dvd drive
I think this falls in the "no floppy disk" category though.
On battery life, PC Mag[1] claims 9:30 against the 2010 Macbook Air's 5:35 - I believe that dominates even the 2011 Air.
[1]http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2383651,00.asp#fbid=fiU...
But it does have a USB3 port, and HDMI port and an eSATA port. I have an Air, and it's awesome, but I fail to see how thunderbolt counts as a plus. If I could somehow trade it in thunderbolt port for a USB3,HDMI and eSATA port I would do so in an instant. Sure in the future once thunderbolt become widespread perhaps it might be useful, but for me, today, it's completely useless and it definitively was in the minus column when deciding which laptop to buy.