In my Three Strikes post I wrapped up the sorry tale of trying to get an X1 Carbon delivered from Lenovo. The day after I cancelled I did get an email indicating it was going to be delayed another 30 days. I’m hoping that is just due to two separate systems not being quite in sync, but I won’t be surprised to find it on the doorstep someday either.
That sent me back to shopping. I took another look at a Samsung Series 9, good specs, but when I tried the keyboard – eh, just didn’t seem like any travel. Hard to judge standing in a store, but just didn’t seem like the one.
That put me back to considering the Mac Air. Steve Jones recommending it, all the reviews are good to great, so decided to try it. Ordered the 8g/256g configuration in case I want to run Windows in a VM (works decently so far using Virtual Box) with the I7 processor. Only had it a couple days but so far its good. Keyboard is good, I wish the display was matte instead of glassy, tethers to my phone nicely over Bluetooth, and the trackpad seems solid. It seems solid.
It’s my first Apple, so I don’t know where anything is. Interesting/annoying. I’m looking forward to trying it in a dual boot config just to see,and I may try Parallels and/or VMware too,but it’s nice that VirtualBox works for free.
Thinking maybe to P2V my current laptop to duck the pain of moving/re-installing my stuff, or make the jump to Windows 8 and do it all at once.
Will be interesting to see.
SQLAndy 
Andy, I strongly recommend VMWare Fusion or Parallels on the Mac. Virtual Box seems to work well enough on a PC (if you ask anyone except Jonathan Kehayias) but the Mac version has been incredibly, incredibly, incredibly unstable for me. I purged it from my system a couple of months ago and the amount of frustration I had with random crashes means (a) it will be a long time before I try it again and (b) I will have a very hard time cautioning folks such as yourself who are considering it.
I hate to speak badly about a free product, and like I said the version on Windows might work great for you as long as you never have to move that VM, but the Mac version just doesn”t seem to be getting the attention that it probably deserves.
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I just switched over to Mac as well (MacBook Pro Retina). I don”t travel much for work, so the performance/weight is a pretty good tradeoff. I”m using Parallels and it is working great for my SQL Server work. It”s faster than my HP laptop running Windows natively, actually. I really dig the Coherence mode where it integrates the Windows OS apps into the MacOS.
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I”m going to order Parallels, that cross OS thing is definitely interesting.
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Welcome to the dark side, Andy!
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Hi Andy
I”ve been contemplating this for a while, what do you intend to use as a replacement for Microsoft Office? I”d be interested to see what you choose, how well it works and how much it costs?
At the moment I”m planning on upgrading in the new year but need to make sure I think it through first
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Gethyn, I don”t think I know yet. I think I”m inclined to just keep on being a Windows guy running it in one VM or another. I”m still early days on exploring. Parts of OSX are nice, parts frustrate me if for no other reason than I don”t know where to find stuff. I”m trying to load up some stuff on OSX so I can get a feel for it. I guess “don”t know” sums it up! Still liking the hardware!
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