The MacBook Air: Thoroughly Reviewed

Designed for a Utopian Society

There is no Ethernet port on the MacBook Air, your only built in connection to the outside world is the 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi that ships with the system. There's also no built in support for cellular 3G networks, which is a bit surprising given Apple's close relationship to AT&T courtesy of the iPhone.

I'm not too blown away by the lack of an Ethernet port coming from my previous ultra portables and I understand the reason for not including one - it's purely an aesthetic choice. Many have faulted Apple for its form over function approach to the MacBook Air, but the fact of the matter is that the Air has garnered more mainstream attention than any other ultra portable I've seen. Part of that is the Apple name, but a lot of it has to do with the styling of the machine.

Apple offers a USB Ethernet controller for $30 that works fine with the Air and will give you full 10/100 Ethernet speeds.

We ran a few benchmarks as a sanity check to make sure you wouldn't be sacrificing any performance by using Ethernet over USB:

The results were as expected, Apple's USB Ethernet dongle is just as good as an integrated solution. The only real complaint we have is that you have to pay an extra $30 for the privilege to have Ethernet on your Air.