My most recent tech purchase over $500 was a computer. Specifically an HP Envy x2. One of the reasons: amazing battery life. Twelve hours or so. The catch: the darned thing pokes along due to an Atom Z2760 CPU. But it’s also $580 so that’s forgivable.
My workhorse notebook is an early 2009 MacBook…with a few upgrades. It’s got the 2GHz Core Duo CPU and nVidia 9400M graphics…backed up with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB Crucial m4 SSD. It’s not the speediest machine out there, and I can’t seem to find a decent replacement battery so I can only get three hours or so away from an outlet, but with the RAM and disk upgrades it’s actually reasonably fun to use.
Why did I just bring up two pieces of old/low-end equipment that have nothing to do with the current MacBook Airs announced a couple hours ago, other than screen size? Because replacing both with a 13-inch Air isn’t out of the question for me…later this year, once the newest OS X edition comes out. That said, there are a few specs that got glossed over during the presentation today, amid all the talk about power efficiency (nine hours on a charge for an 11-inch machine, or twelve hours on a 13-inch, is just excellent). Stuff like CPU speed and upgrade costs.