I am still trying to get my small head around the big news for the MacBook Air. I am trying to figure out if I can possibly use it and whether I should buy it.

The last time I personally owned an Apple was in 1992, and it was an Apple IIGS. And the last time I seriously used a Mac was in 1996, when my friend in college loaned me his old Mac for about 18 months. So I've been very much PC-focused for a long time now, but I was really looking forward to Macworld this year because of the impending news. I figured that this would finally be the year I buy a Mac for myself.

But there seem so many problems inherently built into the device, and here are my two biggest gripes:

1) You can't change the battery on the Air. For my IBM T43, I have three separate batteries that come in handy on long airplane rides or going through a long day of meetings with no nearby power source. In our company, all our sales people have laptops and they run through about one battery every 9-12 months since they are mangling and using poor power saving methods. Though this Air would be for me, and I'm stationary most of the time, I can't live with the thought of being tied to one built-in battery.

2) It lacks an Ethernet port. Do people at Apple not travel with their laptops? Many hotels have Wi-Fi, but many more don't, or have weak Wi-Fi so that using Ethernet is essential. Furthermore, how many times are you in a conference room, about to give a presentation that utilizes a network or the Internet and they have Wi-Fi readily available? More and more places do these days, but Ethernet is still the norm and without a good Ethernet connection, the Air is useless as a traveling presentation device.

I like the small size of the Air and the overall design, but I will now postpone a Mac purchase for another year.