Since the SSD isn't out yet, it would be hard to perform that test.

And I can't imagine a $1000 drive being 'worth it' unless it increases your battery life to 20 hours and makes the machine super-quick (though I would think it would be slower).

Its a valid story because its a different CPU. It was only a year and a half ago that AMD's slower clocked CPUs out performed Higher clocked Pentium 4's. Ghz is not everything. Core 2 Duos at much lower clock speeds eat P4's to lunch as well. Granted they are tested same CPU different generations so I wouldn't expect any difference in this case, but I wouldn't pounce on MacNN over the story. It is nice to know what the exact difference is between a Macbook and Macbook Air.

Keep in mind that MBA benchmarked higher than most PowerMac G5s!

To t***, Apple Store has the SSD ones on display. I've performed the test myself.

MacNN did not write this report, they just reported on another worthless report. - but yeah, some better editorializing, or original reports, would go a long way, beyond their current regurgitations.

Yeah, the Air has a CPU that slower, and an extremely slow hard drive. Thus, it is found to be (gasp!) slower. Amazing people get paid for this.

t*** wrote: "though I would think [ssd] would be slower"

Fact: SSD drive = faster = higher price

http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/13/battleship-mtron-the-absurdly-fast-ssd-raid-array/

http://www.macrumors.com/2008/02/01/macbook-air-1-6ghz-hdd-vs-1-8gh-sdd-benchmarks/

You are all missing the point. The author's point isn't to state that the Macbook Air is slower than a faster Macbook. The benchmarks and article are giving a numerical comparison for those who are interested in exactly how they compare. I thought that was obvious but clearly there are some who will jump on any opportunity to try and make themselves look astute.

tell this c*** from looking at the specs?

I mean the specs for the Air are mostly lower than the low end Macbook - and yet somehow they write an article positing the fact that the Air might surpass that of it's sibling product lines?

What next MacNN - spec'ing out processors - Intels Celeron Dual Core vs the Quad-Core Penryn Chip ?

of the performance with hardware that is about 80-85% as powerful (1.6GHz v 2.0GHz). Whodathought?

The interesting part is that the base-model Air with the 1.6 GHz processer was (overall) ONLY 20% slower than the 2.0 GHz MacBook despite the 40% lower clock speed and the 4200 RPM HDD. Obviously it's not as simple as comparing 1.6 against 2.0 and seeing a 0.6:1 ratio.