Apple MacBook Air

Before you've even laid eyes on the MacBook Air, the very process of extricating it from its packaging frustrates and excites in a way that few technology purchases can. In typical Apple fashion, every detail has been considered, right down to stage managing the first glimpse of your long-awaited purchase.

Scythe open the faceless brown box and the matt black package inside teases with a shot of the MacBook Air's slender rear, while on every side little silver Apple logos and the name "MacBook Air" glimmer attractively. Slip off the infuriatingly tight-fitting lid, and the first sight of the silver frame and white Apple logo, combined with the unashamedly luxurious presentation, are almost enough to force a smile from the most fervent of the anti-Mac brigade.

But the MacBook Air is a simply stunning example of fine design, and its vital statistics speak for themselves. Flat on a desk, the Air stands barely 19mm high at its tallest point, and on the scales, it weighs in at a featherweight 1.38kg.

What's all the more surprising, then, is that it doesn't feel insubstantial - in fact, it's quite the opposite. The laptop feels sturdy in a way that eludes any PC ultraportable we've ever seen. That base might be wafer thin, but the precision-machined internals mean there's nary a hint of flex, no matter how enthusiastically you dare to grapple with it.

The same goes for the 13.3in of glossy display - it's outstandingly slight, but we had to be violently heavy-handed before there was any sign of display distortion.

Ergonomics

But surely it's an ergonomic disaster, right? Wrong. It's all too easy to dismiss the miniature scrabble tiles of the keyboard as a prime example of design over practicality, but spend a little time with the MacBook and such assumptions are soon dismissed, at least partially. The rigid chassis lends the keyboard a rock solid base to build upon, and the widely spaced keys each have a light, responsive action.

However, if you're used to hammering each keypress home, that hard aluminium surround has the tendency to leave your fingertips feeling a touch sore. Adopt a more controlled, delicate typing cadence, however, and the Air's keyboard begins to feel rather fine - every key falls easily under the finger, and even the half-width Enter key gives little cause for aggravation. Adjustable backlighting of the keys is a nice touch too, and makes it easy to find letters under subdued lighting.

We've no doubt the keyboard will polarise opinion for most of those who encounter the MacBook Air - it was in the office for mere minutes before the inevitable bickering began - and the trackpad, too, is similarly divisive. Its generous width and height are due to its multi-touch capabilities which allow, given the appropriate software, on-screen elements such as images to be zoomed, rotated and manipulated with two-fingered gestures.

As is to be expected, only Mac-specific software takes full advantage of multi-touch, but to our surprise it functioned in the Windows applications we tried, allowing us to skim through long Word documents or zoom in and out of pictures in Vista's Photo Gallery. Initial fears that the large trackpad would leave our palms interfering with the cursor every time we tried to type were unfounded - the Air's trackpad ignores the brush of a palm, and only reacts to the prod of a fingertip.

Less reassuring was its tendency to cause Vista to blue screen when we accidentally confused it by touching with too many fingers - we could repeat the trick time after time. On a couple of occasions, the trackpad even refused to work at all until we put the computer to sleep and woke it back up again.