Apple MacBook Air

Hi, I'm Rory Reid and in my hands I have the laptop that everyone, absolutely everyone, has been talking about. It's the Apple MacBook Air – the world's thinnest 13.3-inch laptop.

To get a sense of just how anorexic this thing is, just have a look at it next to my Nokia N95 mobile phone. If laptops could wear ladies' clothes, this would be rocking size zero jeans. And even then they'd be baggy.

Now although it's surprisingly skinny, the MacBook Air isn't particularly light. It weighs about 1.3kg, and that's heavy compared to some laptops like the Toshiba R500, which weighs just under 0.8kg. The reason it's so heavy is because it has to accommodate a 13.3-inch LED backlit widescreen display.

The upshot is that there's plenty of room for a full-size keyboard, which is miles better than those on rival laptops – you never really have to compromise your typing speed, and as it's backlit, it's very easy to use in the dark.

The mouse trackpad is also bigger than anything we've seen before and it supports multi-touch. Check this out: I can use a special three-finger technique to go forwards or backwards in a web browser, a pinch or stretch motion to zoom in or zoom out, or two fingers to scroll up and down through documents. And if I load up iPhoto, I can also rotate photos using a twisting motion.

It's really difficult not to like this thing. Until you start to have a poke around. The Air is sorely lacking in connectivity. The only input/output ports are located under this flap at the right hand side. There you'll find a mini DVI port for connecting an external display – either DVI or D-Sub. Then there's a single, solitary, lonely USB port, and a headphone jack.

There's no Ethernet port. If you want that, you're going to have to connect this USB to an Ethernet adaptor, which then leaves you with no USB connectivity. On top of that, you might have noticed a lack of a DVD rewriter. Apparently the MacBook Air is too skinny to use one, so you get one of these external SuperDrives. Again, that connects via USB, so you'll need to do a lot of juggling.

My final gripe about the MacBook Air is the fact that the battery isn't user-replaceable. Which is a crime if you ask me. A laptop lives and dies on the whole battery issue, and yes, the battery on this does last a decent four-and-a-half hours. But what happens when your battery malfunctions? You have to send the entire laptop back to be serviced.

At the end of the day, the MacBook Air is a very good laptop. It's probably the best-looking machine I've ever seen, and it's really easy to use and very portable. But it's mostly a case of style over substance.