MacBook Air is Wi-Fi-only
GRAHAM K. ROGERS

The one thing that surprised many people when the MacBook Air was announced was the lack of an optical disk drive.

It may be a natural progression with the faster Wi-Fi links now. This also indicates the intention of the MacBook Air as a second, or even third computer aimed at those who travel often and attend meetings or make presentations. Software is either downloaded (as most of mine is these days), installed from another Mac, or from a PC running Windows. An external drive is available as an option.

The software to do this, and even to re-install the operating system if ever needed, is on the disk that comes with the MacBook Air. Similar software for the Mac was also on the disk, but with the update of Leopard to 10.5.2 a new Sharing preference for disks is now available. Once this part of the panel is checked, a dialogue reports that "This allows users of other computers to use this computer's DVD or CD drive remotely" but this appears only to operate with the MacBook Air.

With my other machines, the disk was not playable: on the MacBook Air there is an icon with the legend "Remote Disk". As well as downloading and installing NeoOffice (my preferred Office suite) I was able to access the Microsoft Office install disk from the drive in my MacBook Pro, or from the eMac that is also on my home network. I was also able to play DVDs from either of the two computers: there was no jerkiness or noticeable delay with data transfer: the network and computers use the 802.11n standard.

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