With the release of the MacBook Air and the recent release of Boot Camp software, it may be possible to have both a Mac and a fully compatible PC in one notebook.
Many people want a sleek notebook computer but at the same time want to be compatible with everyone else in terms of software and files. This compatibility requirement means you will need to run a Windows-based platform such as Windows XP or Vista. Most software titles are developed for this platform and it is nearly impossible to find some of the popular game titles and other software that will run on Linux or Apple's OSX platform.
With the release of Apple's MacBook Air, there are sure to be many people who want the sleek profile of an Apple notebook (which is only about 0.83 inches thick and can fit in a manila envelope) but at the same time need to sacrifice such a purchase because they need Windows-based compatibility for the files they need for work or school.
This trade off may not be necessary as it now appears that with the release of Apple's OSX 10.5 also known, as Leopard, Apple includes the BootCamp software which for the first time is out of beta release. This means that it should reliably allow you to turn your Mac into a full-blown PC with the ability to run software at native PC speeds. This is made possible because Apple now uses Intel chips in it's computers. Many users have run graphics and hardware intensive games such as Half Life 2 and Doom 3 with great success. The drawback of this system is that you would have to decide on what operating system you want to run at startup and you cannot effortlessly switch back and forth without a restart. Other 3rd party software solutions exist to allow you to run both operating systems at the same time but they make the PC-side very slow such that hardware intensive applications on the PC are inoperable.
Despite the drawbacks, the day when a windows-based operating system can be run using Apple's superior hardware may have finally arrived with the MacBook Air combined with Apple's Leopard operating system.
