Finally a quality netbook.

My experience with laptop computers has not been a happy one. All three of my iBooks failed shortly after the warranty period ended and the best I used, an MSI Wind netbook hacked to run OS X, broke its screen hinges after two years of hard use. While the keyboard in the Wind could have been a bit larger that netbook was excellent value for money, especially once Windows was removed. Mercifully, the iPad came to market at just that time so the netbook went off to the recyclers and the iPad became my sole portable computing device, if you exclude the iPhone from that definition.

Well, that’s about to change. The rumor mill called the release of the new MacBook Air dead right, predicting both sizes – 11.6″ and 13.3″ – and my price point of $1,000 was right, so I ordered the 11.6″ base specification model for $999 yesterday and expect it here early next week.

The new MacBook Air.

Let’s be clear about one thing. If your Mac laptop serves as your primary computer, maybe connected to a larger display at work or your TV at home, the Air is not the right choice. While the Air supports external displays, it’s slow by comparison, has little internal storage and, until I use it for a while, is probably a good deal more fragile than the MacBook Pro.

On the other hand, if you want a capable road machine which can do light Photoshop and Lightroom work on your photos, the Air may be just the thing. The 11.6″ model I have on order runs a 1.4gHz Intel Core2Duo CPU which should equal the performance of the overclocked 2.0 gHz Intel Atom in the MSI Wind, which was just fine with Lightroom. Now while the smaller Air does not come with an SD card slot – there’s no room for one – a small card reader will do, plugged into one of the two USB sockets. And if the 64gB Flash storage, in lieu of an energy sapping conventional disk drive, proves too small, an external self powered USB HDD will do the trick. Finally, the screen aspect ratio is widescreen which works well with movies.

What is most significant about the Air, however, is what it lacks. Not just weight, where the 11.6″ model comes in at just 2.2 lbs (the iPad is 1.5); Apple has deleted the DVD drive from the machine and followed up by announcing the App Store for the Mac whereby all future software purchases will be optionally made over the air from those vendors who join the Store. And as you already watch movies streamed from any number of sources it’s safe to say that the DVD drive, and the DVD it reads or writes to, are both effectively dead. The machine also lacks the traditional power sapping spinning hard disk drive, replacing it with flash memory and “instant-on” functionality, once you have booted it, that is, with 30 day standby time with the lid closed. That’s a feature in the iPad which I never want to lose.

The iPad? Well, until someone (Adobe – are you awake?) comes along with photo processing software engineered for the touchscreen, there’s only amateur-hour apps out there for the photographer. The iPad is a gorgeous device for viewing pictures but it’s not there yet for processing. How hard can it be to add a touch overlay to a great app like Lightroom. for heaven’s sake?

Part II appears here.

Disclosure: Long AAPL stock and call options.