The MacBook Air is quite a beautiful work of Apple engineering. You really cannot appreciate its Air moniker until you hold one in your hand. Yes, only one hand is enough to easily carry and move this ultrathin laptop.
But as many reviews have indicated, the thinness comes at a price: No optical drive (external device available), and only one USB port, one audio-out, and a micro-DVI port. Even the MagSafe power adapter is modified to connect at a 90-degree angle. That’s right, no Ethernet (adapter available) and no FireWire.
The lack of optical drive spurn another Apple innovation: Remote Disc. It allows the Air to share the optical drive of another Windows or Mac. Sounds pretty cool, but it’s kind of a pain in the rear. Fair enough, I don’t really use the DVD drive in normal use, but now that I’m trying to migrate from an old MacBook to the Air and the procedure is to insert the Installation Disc then run Disk Utility, it got kind of annoying. Remote Disc has to work over Wi-Fi — not the most effective method for installing or restoring gigabytes of data.
I ended up using my iPhone to help with the transition. I made sure iTunes works as usual, hooked it up to the Air, then hit sync. This was by far the most painless method…
