Forced to go shopping in one of Dubai’s huge shopping malls the other day, I was able to get my first look at the Apple MacBook Air. Apple do not have a presence in the Middle East so everything is sold through a reseller, which means it always takes a few months for us to get a hands on look at anything new thing Apple has released onto the world.

Previously I had thought that the slimness of the design would mean that the MacBook Air would feel very flimsy but that wasn’t the case. While it is noticeably lighter than an average laptop and obviously a lot thinner it still manages to feel robust enough to be truly portable. In spite of the Air being underpowered compared to the standard MacBooks, playing around with the software in the store I didn’t see much of a hit on performance, and the keyboard is great.

I still think that as a laptop, while it is not for everyone with only one USB port, no CD/DVD drive and a reliance on WiFi for networking which makes software and data migration a challenge, it has certainly pushed back the barriers of what is possible with a laptop computer. The highly rated MacBook Air is a great buy for the Apple fan who is looking for a very portable computer and is the featured laptop on PriceGrabber at present.