Packing a men's blazer or swiss army knife type device

[jonjake]

I've found that the new Atom-based netbooks like yours actually run faster with Leopard than XP or Vista -- you might be surprised at how powerful your Acer really is when it's running OSX instead of Windows.

As for the MBA, even though I'm an Apple laptop fanatic this one just leaves me cold. Too slow, too expensive, too limited, too non-expandable, and not so much smaller or lighter than a MacBook to really warrant spending all that money just to have a Mac laptop that tapers to a thinner edge. I keep trying to warm up to the Air but every time I play with one I feel better about my decision, after waiting to see what the rumored ultralight Mac might bring to the table and watching Job's keynote to the end, to go ahead and buy a white 2.2GHz MB (along with a 200GB/7200rpm HD and 4GB of RAM from Newegg).

I guess if all I did on my laptop was surf and word processing, the Air would suffice. But if that's all I did, I'd much rather spend $500 on a cool little Atom-powered netbook like your Acer or MSI's Wind or Lenovo's S10 and throw OSX onto it. One of these little guys and a small Bihn Cafe bag and you're all set.

That was one of my first thoughts when I got the Acer... well, actually before I bought the Acer. Now that I've got it and it's running, well, it's a little underwhelming. Even if I could hack it to get it running OS X, I'm not sure I'd care that much.

When the MB Air first came out, I was a little underwhelmed: I mean, I have a long history of buying useless - errr, niche fulfilling - gadgets (don't ask my wife!). I thought if it wasn't small, then what's the point? As I thought about it though, if you really are going to use a laptop on your lap, then it has to be wide enough to span your lap; and if you're going to work more than 15 minutes, a larger screen is so much more productive. Too small of a screen and it's just a toy really. I've tried - and seen others - scrunch up their legs together to support teeny, tiny laptops and slouch down to see the screen. I'm not that old, but old enough to give that scenario a pass!

Still, my objective was to: 1) get something cheap enough that I would not be devastated by a loss, theft, or damage; and 2) get something small enough that would be easy to travel with. The MB Air doesn't rank as "cheap", and it's only space saving in one dimension.

All this angst so that I can fit my life into a bag, and a special bag at that. Who knew that hunter green, nylon luggage could play such a prominent role in my life!

[ozone]

Hmmm... I suppose I should give the little Acer a chance. It does run fairly fast. A little noisy... and it's XP.

Small TB Cafe? I bought a large one! (I carry other stuff usually too...)

[aiethabell]

(Referring to pretzelb's comment re a packing list in a post on Red Oxx's Air Boss reviews pages) I pulled out my Air Boss and tried to duplicate that list. I couldn't. .... If you stuffed the Air Boss with the whole list it bulged like a snake after a big meal. Not only was it unwieldy, it was too heavy (even with my Absolute Strap) and looked too big - a sure-fire way to get gate-checked.

For those who go to the Red Oxx site to look at the list, here's something odd: the list of items in that Air Boss review has changed.

The current list fits just fine. However, I copied the original post (the day it was posted) so I could try to duplicate it, and it had more items than it does now.

Maybe I wasn't the only one who couldn't make the list work?