OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 8.1. For example, your documents or pictures folders can be mirrored onto your desktop as fences making them easy to access without cluttering up your desktop. Fences can be made to act as a portal to a particular folder.
![]() The Surface Laptop 2, MateBook X Pro and XPS 13 are all so bright that they don't have issues with viewing angles.I've never been a fan of the butterfly-switch keys that Apple uses, but I'm starting to accept them. Annoyingly, though, those same colors darkened a tad at 45 degrees to the left and right. Dell XPS 13: Which Should You Buy?As I tested the MacBook Air, I felt that the display was bright enough, especially as I watched a nature video, with trees and lakes retaining their vibrancy when I rotated the screen 30 degrees. This 4.6 x 3.1-inch surface provided accurate input recognition and smooth scrolling. I'm personally a little uneasy about the b utterfly switch's long-term durability, and I will be switching to use this Air full time to see how its keyboard holds up.I've never been a fan of the butterfly-switch keys that Apple uses, but I'm starting to accept them.Apple's also changed the MacBook Air's touchpad, moving from a traditional clickable surface to the all-glass Force Touch trackpad. Her verdict was simple: "I think I like this keyboard: I have no problems with it." Not high praise but a solid vote of confidence in Apple, nonetheless. This is owed to the keys' 70 grams of required actuation force (we look for at least 60 grams) not their measly 0.6 millimeters of travel (1.5 to 2.0 is preferred).But what do current MacBook Air owners think? I handed the new Air to my mom, who's used a MacBook Air for over six years. Fences 2018 2017 Series Processors AreI'm not editing movies or dealing with heavy Photoshop files, but can this machine live up to the standards that journalists have relied upon? (The MacBook Air spent many years being the laptop seen in the hands of writers at press events.)I think the answer is yes, fortunately enough. Yes, the Air may not be Apple's Pro-grade laptop, but with its $1,099 starting price (which includes 8GB of RAM), it's a premium-level product.So, I went about testing this machine with a strong eye toward its performance, both on synthetic tests and in everyday use, to see if I could rely on it as my everyday work machine. Y-series processors are known for offering less-than-premium performance, as was found in the decidedly meh 12-inch MacBook. Apple touts this Air as offering twice as much bass and 25 percent more volume compared to the 2017 MacBook Pro, and having used both, I believe those claims.When I discovered that this MacBook Air runs on an Intel Core i5-8210Y processor, blaring sirens went off in my head. The hard post-punk rock of Idles' "Colossus" sounded excellent on the Air, particularly the tune's growling guitar riffs. As the laptop filled our large newsroom with the sweet melodies of Carly Rae Jepsen's "Party for One," I noted the song's strong bass, clear vocals and crisp drum cymbals.Don't worry if pop music isn't your vibe. All of these PCs were tested with 8GB of RAM, except the MateBook X Pro, which had 16GB of memory.The MacBook Air looks to make up for that performance weakness with amazing SSD performance, as the Blackmagic disk test clocked the write speeds on the Air's 256GB SSD at a blistering 2.1 gigabytes per second. The one downside was that the fans on the Air had spun up pretty loud when I was doing all of that, but they quieted down when I stopped moving between apps so quickly and stuck with Chrome, Pixelmator and Messages.I used Continuity Camera to easily drop a new photo into a new email, and I chuckled as it all happened without a pause, even with tons of apps open in the background.My why-oh-Y-series concerns reared their head when the MacBook Air notched a 7,871 on the Geekbench 4.3 general performance benchmark, achieving about two-thirds of the 12,230 category average.We saw higher scores from similarly priced PC laptops that sported faster U-series processors, including the Core i5-8250U-based (13,254), the Core i7-8550U-based Spectre 13 (13,090), the Core i5-8250U-based Surface Laptop 2 (12,744) and the Core i7-8550U-based MateBook X Pro (13,769). That much multitasking gives me confidence in the MacBook Air, which every journalist needs with their hardware. The MacBook Air stayed responsive as I loaded TweetDeck, Pixelmator and Bear, three of the other apps I use more than any other on my Mac.Then, I used Continuity Camera - one of macOS Mojave's best new features - to easily drop a photo into a new email, and I chuckled as it all happened without a pause, even with all that stuff open in the background. Force quit drcleaner mac7 release, Apple issued the macOS Mojave 10.14.1 Supplemental Update for MacBook Air (2018). The XPS 13 (18:17), Surface Laptop 2 (17:30) and MateBook X Pro (27:18) each took less time.On November 8, the day after the MacBook Air's Nov. The XPS 13 (1:08), Surface Laptop 2 (1:15) and MateBook X Pro (1:49) all turned in faster run times.MORE: MacBook Air: Can Apple Stage a Comeback?The MacBook Air also stumbled on our HandBrake video-conversion test, taking 37:24 to transcode a 4K video to 1080p - 50 percent longer than the 21:08 premium laptop average. The SSDs in the XPS 13, HP Spectre 13, Surface Laptop 2 and MateBook X Pro all performed at rates from 203 to 508 MBps, which is a fraction of what Apple's laptop pulled off.The MacBook Air took a long time of 3 minutes and 26 seconds to complete our Excel VLookup test (which matches 60,000 names to addresses), a time more than twice as long as the 1:34 category average. That falls below our smoothness threshold of 30 fps and far under the 71 fps premium notebook average.We saw faster rates from the XPS 13 (57 fps), Spectre 13 (57 fps), Surface Laptop 2 (82 fps) and MateBook X Pro (117). The Air ran the OpenGL portion of the Cinebench R15 benchmark, which measures graphics performance, at 35.3 frames per second, which is well behind the XPS 13's 49.3 fps (Intel UHD Graphics 620).The Air struggled with the modestly demanding racing game Dirt 3 (set to medium graphics at 1080p), which the machine ran at 21.5 frames per second.
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