They’re at it again…

On the heels of reports of iPads and Apple TVs flying off physical and virtual shelves alike, Apple introduces a revised MacBook Air. This one I’m pretty eager to get my hands on. I was honestly a bit disappointed by the first generation Air and am hopeful that Apple’s tagline of having rolled all they’ve learned so far into these new models holds up.

The hype looks good: 5-7 hours of battery life, LED backlit screen, 2-4 gigs of RAM and a solid state drive (not a traditional hard disk drive). My experience with the iPad has taught me the value of instant-on and I am looking forward to seeing how OS X runs in an SSD environment.

Ars Technica calls both the 13.3-inch and 11.6-inch models “incredibly thin and light” and is particularly taken with the smaller version.

Both devices are incredibly thin and light, but the 11.6″ version stole the show. The machine is practically netbook-sized (but don’t tell Steve Jobs or Tim Cook we said that, as they seem to have a seething hatred for netbooks), but has a full-sized keyboard and almost-full-sized trackpad. The 13.3″ model seemed like a monster by comparison, though as a previous MacBook Air owner, I really like the new design.

Several outlets have commented on the snappiness of the new MacBook Airs when waking from sleep, with the machines ready to use nearly instantly upon opening the lid. While not quite instant, a full boot take only about 15 seconds according to Forbes.

The most remarkable feature, however, isn’t cosmetic, it’s these machine’s boot time.

Bootup takes less than 15 seconds, according to my watch. That’s a good deal less than the roughly 50 seconds it takes my trusty Windows laptop to come to life.

As Apple notes in a support document, the 30-day standby battery life for the new MacBook Airs is achieved with a new mode that activates after an hour of regular sleep, saving the entire system state to flash memory and turning off hardware systems.Mac Rumors

Those not familiar with the Apple product line have asked me what the point of the Air model is when they already have a line of notebooks. These people obviously haven’t carried a Macbook Pro around much. I carry mine on a daily basis and while it doesn’t bother me, I think twice before lugging it around the house or office as a portable computing device – and mine is the smaller 15″ model.

One other curious point to mention: the OEM flash drive to reload the new MBA operating system. One of my original disappointments with the Air was lack of an optical drive, but I’ve found through using my iPad, in particular, that I really don’t use it very often at all and as with the 3.5″ floppy drive before it – I probably won’t miss it when it’s gone.

For those with more computing needs than an iPad can offer, the lower end 11″ MBP, at $999, is twice the price, but also offers twice the power and isn’t much heavier. Those who bought the biggest, baddest iPad they could get their hands on might be experiencing a bit of buyers remorse right about now.

Images  © Apple Inc.