Today I had to put my less than 1 year old Macbook Pro into the shop for warranty repairs to the graphics card.  I’d been having a yellow screen issue for a while and finally it was starting to not play videos at all.  Like usual they’ll have it for 5+ days.  That leaves me without a computer for a full work week.  I travel almost every week and having information at my fingertips is the entire basis of my business.  Being without a computer is something I simply can’t do.  For the first time today I was told about the new Apple Business Joint Venture loaner program.  It would have been nice if I’d gotten an email or something on this as we’ve spent thousands with Apple through the years and have been business members the entire time.  But they’re busy people so I guess it’s understandable.  The problem with the program is no one from business is available on the weekends and I can’t retro-activate it to get the loaner for this repair.  So I had to buy a new computer.  My wife has been wanting to trade out her 2+ year old iMac for a Macbook Air and utilize the system I do hooking it up to a 22″ monitor and using a bluetooth keyboard/mouse while in the office.  I opted for the 11″ $1,199 model as the $999 model only had 2 gb of ram making it just barely qualifying to run the new Lion ios.

Thoughts: It’s barely bigger than an iPad!  I can’t wait to travel with this little guy.  It easily slides beneath my monitor and works perfectly as a desktop replacement when hooked up.  Right now I’m watching the Saints game typing away on the perfectly sized keyboard.  It’s almost too light as I feel it  sliding backwards a bit in my lap.  All I can think so far is why didn’t I get one of these earlier.  Before picking up an iPad I HIGHLY recommend considering the Air.  For a little more money you can get something much more functional.