My name is Brandon and I am a Mac hater (applause throughout crowd accompanied by most people murmuring, ‘Hi, Brandon’).

So, it will come as a shock to you that I not only attended Macworld, but ran back to my hotel to order a MacBook Air soon after the announcement. I was one of the first to receive my pretty little ‘computer’ in the mail and have been carrying it around for a couple of weeks now. A lot of people stop me in the airports to gander at my MBA and ask questions like ‘do you like it,’ or ‘can I touch it?’. That last one always creeps me out.

Of course–I also get people telling me about all the problems with it: no ports, can’t change the battery, no built-in cellular modem, and it is slow. I, of course, appreciate them telling me that I am a fool for buying a $1,799 paperweight, but. luckily for me, I don’t agree with them. Despite my rocky history with Apple, I really love this machine for a number of reasons. And–I do believe that one of the primary reasons is that it is made for someone who lives in airports just like I do.

I use a bluetooth mouse so my one USB port is not wasted with a wireless dongle or a corded mouse. I use a VerizonWirless UMB 150 USB Modem, but that fits in the port just fine. I actually don’t want built-in cellular because I want to use my USB Modem on more than one machine.

I never use a disk drive. I sometimes think that I will watch a DVD on an airplane, but I usually just work or watch podcasts on my iPod. So–I don’t miss it. The only time I have wanted to have a drive was when I installed Microsoft Office. So, I had to copy the install disk to a thumb drive.

Speaking of Microsoft–the support for Exchange in Office 2008 is something to write home about (or to post on a blog about). It actually works and works well. My biggest headache with Mac in the past has been that Word/Excel/Entourage was too much of a learning curve and just wasn’t close enough to my PC experience. Well, I only have positive things to say now.

And the multitouch keyboard–what can I say? I thought it was a gimmick that wouldn’t mean anything to me, but it has changed how I use the computer. I no longer have to reach for a mouse (except during presentations) because I love the ease of scrolling, right-clicking, window dragging, etc that I can now do with the multitouch pad.

Ok–I started by saying that I hated Mac and Apple and now I sound like a fanboy ready to get Newton’s muse inked onto my shoulder blade. Well, I do love the MacBook Air, but that is because it does what I need it to do. I am on an airplane almost weekly and the MBA is light, doesn’t take much space, has everything I need, and is fun to use. I am not completely over to the darkside, though, because my office computer is still a PC and there are several programs that I run not available on Mac yet.

For a road warrior–I think this machine cannot be beat. But, that doesn’t mean I am letting my PC go…….yet.