Thank you Gordon Low for revamping the Macvalley Web sites! Now to other topics! Such as whether to buy a MacBook Air on eBay

First off, I want to thank Gordon Low for revamping the MacValley Web sites. Both the MacValley Web site and this blog Web site look wonderful!

Second, this is a potpourri of topics tonight.

My first Mac topic is whether or not to buy a MacBook Air on eBay. A client of mine wanted to buy the slim & beautiful MacBook Air to take with him to music studios. He wants to use Sibelius 7 with it.

I had to tell him, and now you, that most of these MacBook Airs on eBay won’t run Sibelius. Sibelius 7 demands a lot of a Mac, particularly of its storage hardware. The specs for Sibelius 7 ask for a 7200 rpm hard drive or a Solid State Drive. And Apple solders the storage device to the motherboard.

If you price a MacBook Air on eBay, check the hard drive. Is it a spinning platter? If so, it runs at 5400 rpm. How much memory? Remember, Apple solders the memory on the MBAs. You Cannot Upgrade the Memory.

So I wouldn’t consider them for running a demanding application such as Sibelius 7. If you want to buy one as a light-duty machine for word-processing and Web surfing, they fit the bill.

Third,here are some shots taken the night Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996. An Apple QuickTake camera took these photos and the color registration wasn’t that good. Steve did NOT wear a purple jacket, he wore a black jacket. (h/t to Daring Fireball)