This Mac guy might rather have a ThinkPad

UltraNav + OSX = Bliss

UltraNav is why I run OSX on a ThinkPad.

You do not need USB for all this

While the Thinkpad certainly trumps the MacBook Air when it comes to hardware interfaces, you do NOT need to carry all those USB gadgets along to get the same functionality on the MacBook Air. Let's start with the mouse, that should be a no-brainer these days. Get a wireless (Bluetooth) mouse, i.e. Wireless Mighty Mouse. By the way, the trackpad on the MBA is great, so you should actually hardly need a mouse while on the road, but even if you do, just use Bluetooth. The wireless MM has a supreme laser-based sensor (unfortunately not found on the wired one?) and will work on a very wide variety of surfaces, even conventional mouse pads that don't work well with the optical mice I've had before. It has a 360° scrolling function (good replacement for the two finger scrolling on Apple trackpads) and the power switch on the bottom side also serves as a protective cover for the sensor, very useful for taking it with you wherever you go. And doesn't stuffing the mouse cable into rsp. fishing it out of your notebook bag annoy you anyway? One caveat after all the praise: The middle-click functionality (i.e. opening a new tab in Firefox or Safari) takes some practice to do without scrolling involuntarily.

Then there's the headset. There are Bluetooth headsets as well, but I'll even grant you this much because of the final and most important point: If you have a 3G mobile phone with Bluetooth modem support, you can use it to connect your MacBook Air, or actually any current Mac, to the Internet wherever you go. The MBA connects to the phone using Bluetooth and the phone connects to the cellular network using HSDPA or GPRS/EDGE or whatever is supported and available. I've once connected my Mac mini running Tiger to the Internet using HSDPA (I guess, because of the speed) that way and it worked like a charm. I did have to download and install (well, basically, copy a file into the right folder) an extra script because my phone wasn't supported out of the box, but that wasn't difficult. See

http://www.taniwha.org.uk/

Just make sure you have either a data plan or a lot of money. :-) But I guess the same caveat applies for the Thinkpad as well. Oh, yes, the iPhone doesn't support this functionality unless you hack it, which is a real pity.

PS: Yes, Vista IS useless, unfortunately. Although I use Mac OS for good, now that I've seen Vista, I have to say: XP was never that bad after all!

PPS: I can now use Cisco VPN on my Mac mini, and even use it from virtualized XP in NAT mode (that part was a little bit tricky). In combination with the 3G solution mentioned above that would mean: VPN on the go, accessible via OS X and virtualized Windows apps at the same time.

Ahh yes, good thing the US

Ahh yes, good thing the US is just covered with 3G and WiMax. That surely makes it a deal breaker with the MBA.

Perhaps in a few years when the US has better coverage, then I can see that being a valid argument.

You just won a darwin award for stupidity

I say go for it - your obviously an idiot and a candidate for this years dawrin awards.

If you genuinely think that it is worth forfeiting your faultless OSX experience for the nightmare of Vista just because you have wimax (available in a handful of hotspots) and 3G ( get a USB 3G adapter if it's so important) then I say good luck to you - off you go.

All those rarefied 'online' chances you think your going to benefit from will be seriously outweighed by the general torture of the overall experience.

3G, WiMAX sound good. But,

3G, WiMAX sound good. But, why is
any Thinkpad so ugly from the beginning
(from IBM period)?

You want the specs for the X300?

http://www.small-laptops.com/lenovo-thinkpad-x300/

Appears to have them all.

This is really the same old

This is really the same old argument IBM vs Mac. I have sold, fixed and used both IBM and Macs for years. The Mac has always been the sweetheart of the two, elegant, smooth and tasteful. This new thinkpad is undoubtedly based on some of IBMs technology, which has always been worth every penny. The think pad series has never been praised for its good looks on the outside but the inside is a different story. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of working on a Thinkpad what the Mac has on the outside the Thinkpads have on the inside. Engineering is second to none, high quality parts and durability to boot. I always sold Thinkpads by likening them to a 10 year old Honda, you want a new one but the old one just wont quit. Having spend time with both Macs and Thinkpads I can safely say that if you want to look good for the other computer users get the Mac it looks great, if you want to do work, anywhere, anytime then look no further than a Thinkpad. As far as Windows XP vs OS X, X looks good, XP works, on just about anything with a processor and RAM. Heaven help Lenovo (previously China's Legend PC) when they run out of all the engineering that IBM had done and need to replace American know how with Chinese know how to cut corners. At that point in time, Ill take the Mac.

It's in the small things

I think while the lenovo is a good machine, it probably has one big problem: It doesn't run Mac OS X (the legal way).

Apart from that, I think the screen, keyboard, touch pad with multi-touch, built-in iSight and ambient light sensor make up for a lot of the Macbook Air's drawbacks.

I had decided from the start to buy a Macbook - I just went for the thinnest one they had after Macworld.

And to me, 3G or WiMax aren't such an issue. I use this machine to commute from University to my apartment, which is a 10 minute walk uphill (really very uphill).

Frankly, if you can't unplug for even half an hour, you really have issues. Seriously, there is NO job in the world that requires this whilst still being sane.