I feel cheated

Today I bought my first mac as I have grown sick and tired of MS and all the problems. I did a lot of research and concluded that the new Macbook Air was the one for me and due to the fact I live on a sailboat where everything can get knocked about at times I decided to opt for the solid state hard drive which drove the price up by $700. I am now sitting in my boat with my beautiful new $2600 mac and I feel I have been royally ripped off. In all the adds. and on the packaging it states that my machine has 128 gigs of memory but on entering the utilities and checking I am told the drive has a capacity of 112 gigs and before I have added a single file of my own I am down to 93 gigs. Is there not a law against this sort of thing? I figure I am short 25% of a drive that cost an additional $700 what can I do about this? I welcome you advice and comments. I would also add the superdrive an additional $130 will not only not work with any other machine, it will not work though any king of usb hub, I am not happy.

captainstuart said:

T In all the adds. and on the packaging it states that my machine has 128 gigs of memory but on entering the utilities and checking I am told the drive has a capacity of 112 gigs and before I have added a single file of my own I am down to 93 gigs.

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By "memory" I am assuming you mean HD storage space (capacity) and not RAM.

Advertised space does not equate to actual formatted space on a HD.

Never has, never will.

ALL manufacturers do this and it is not illegal in any way, shape or form.

All HDs are like that. The advertised/listed size is calculated as 1,000,000,000 bytes but is in fact larger than this which makes the HD actually appear smaller. This is not Apple, this is all HDs.

For instance, a 120GB HD would be listed as 120,000,000,000 bytes. Using the official byte count (according to wikipedia it is 1,073,741,824 bytes). So, a 120GB HD would be 120,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,824 = 111.76 GB (as reported by the OS). The HD also has to be formatted which might be why OSX reports my 120GB HD to be 111.47 GB.

I hope that clears up any confusion for you.

EDIT: D3v1L80Y has quicker fingers than I do.

It's funny how people only notice hard drive capacity problems when they switch to a Mac yet it somehow eluded them for the many years they used a PC.

Kash said:

It's funny how people only notice hard drive capacity problems when they switch to a Mac yet it somehow eluded them for the many years they used a PC.

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LOL so true

Kash said:

It's funny how people only notice hard drive capacity problems when they switch to a Mac yet it somehow eluded them for the many years they used a PC.

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Kash, I totally agree with you. I have worked as a PC tech for years and rarely hear anyone complain even though the exact same thing is going on with a Windows machine as a Mac as far as hard drive reported size VS Stated size. I am on a few PC forums and hardly ever see this come up. Maybe it's because they pay more for their Mac they expect it to be different, but all hard drives are same whether in a PC or a Mac.

To the OP, you have exactly what you paid for. My Compaq and Acer Netbook and IBM Thinkpad are the exact same way. My Acer Netbook has a 160 GB drive and with nothing (even the OS) installed it's at 143 GB or around.

The reason you paid all that extra $700 is at this point in time SOLID STATE DRIVES are still very new and VERY expensive.

Sorry if this post sounds mean. It's not meant to be.

Thanks for the feedback guys, I now fully understand the situation and confess I never noticed this in my PC days. As someone said it only really becomes noticeable when you pay a lot extra for the SSD.
I do love the Air it is so sexy! and surfing the net with the new Safari and the Air touch pad is a quantum leap forward. However there are some things I would like to do with it that I can't because of the impossibility of using the superdrive on a hub. I really would like to burn double layer DVDs with files taken from a external HD without having to transfer them onto the Air first. Unless the superdrive is connected directly to the only usb on the Air it will not work. If anyone can tell me of a hub that it will work though I would be most grateful, I have tried several both powered and not. Everything else seems happy on a hub even my Wave marine wifi antenna.

I was a looooooong time PC guy, bought my first PC for my home in 1990. Keep using you're new Mac.....you will love it! It just plain works, and does everything well, very well in my opinion.

As these folks already noted, the drive space "issue" has been around as long as drives have.

you can buy a 16gig flash drive for $19.99, which would give you the full 128, then you wouldn't be robbed by the man.

Perhaps your issue should be with the hard drive manufacturer.

captainstuart said:

Thanks for the feedback guys, I now fully understand the situation and confess I never noticed this in my PC days. As someone said it only really becomes noticeable when you pay a lot extra for the SSD.
I do love the Air it is so sexy! and surfing the net with the new Safari and the Air touch pad is a quantum leap forward. However there are some things I would like to do with it that I can't because of the impossibility of using the superdrive on a hub. I really would like to burn double layer DVDs with files taken from a external HD without having to transfer them onto the Air first. Unless the superdrive is connected directly to the only usb on the Air it will not work. If anyone can tell me of a hub that it will work though I would be most grateful, I have tried several both powered and not. Everything else seems happy on a hub even my Wave marine wifi antenna.

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I'm not sure I entirely understand but I'm gonna try...
you want to use your MBA to burn DVDs that are not on the MBA's harddrive?
I don't have an air, but I have had quite a few computers, and I think it'd be fairly difficult to do this. I mean, if the files were on another computer, then maybe you could use the MBA's software to read the files wirelessly and burn them - but I'm just making assumptions here because I'm far from a computer technician, and I've never had an MBA. But from what you're saying it sounds like the files are actually on an external harddrive, and external hd's have no operating system, so as far as I know this is not possible.

In my defense it's 5am and I'm still up from 11:30am yesterday... but I hope this was of some help? I'm not sure I either A) understood your question or B) responded coherently.

Yes sorry about that I was having a senior moment. My main issue on the one usb port and not hub able superdrive is my wifi comes from a wave marine antenna which is usb connected so to spend hours burning back up double layer dvds ( which is why I bought the thing!) I have to be off line. I can link my external drives and antenna to the Air from a hub but the superdrive will not work that way. I see a woman by the name of tnkgirl has modified a superdrive to work on other computers but it is drastic and has issues and is not something I would want to do. I am now looking at the possibility of a dongle from usb to ethernet (the opposite sexes to the Mac one) for my antenna and buying a Airport to connect using the Air's built in wifi. All this because I live on a boat anchored in a lagoon and therefore swinging around, hence the long range omnidirectional antenna. I know I should have bought the Macbook but I spend a lot of time traveling and that's what the Air is for. This is my first Mac ,I love it and I will never go back.

You know, I *believe* there's something you can get that plugs into the USB slot and creates 2 USB slots. Like a splitter, if you get what I'm saying. Let me look into that, because it sounds like that's what you're having the most problems with.

Here we go!
I found one that's not sold through apple, but I believe works on both PCs and Macs (it says "ideal for MacBook Air and other slim laptops") ANTOnline.com - Griffin Technology 3026-SSUSB Griffin 3026-SSUSB SmartShare USB Slimmed-down USB Hub for MacBook Air and Notebooks
That one will give you 2 USB ports.

As for the apple store, they have only have 1 option for your computer, and it will give you 4 USB ports, but read what reviewers have to say because you may find that it's difficult to use: Belkin USB 2.0 Plus Hub (4-Port) - Apple Store (U.S.)

If you want to search for other products on your own, try searching "USB hub" and see what comes up. I hope this helps! I know you paid a lot for your laptop and want to get the most out of it! I'm glad you're loving it and will never go back - that's good news; that's the same revelation I had about my own computing life 4 years ago hahaha.
Just so you know - if something happened where you wanted to trade in your laptop at apple (idk if they even do that, but they may!) for a MacBook, they DO now make the MacBook with a SolidState HDD.
To get the SSD on the MacBook, you have to get the second-level macbook (the $1299 aluminum unibody)... it raises the price $450, so the notebook prices out at $1749 before taxes.

Ok once again thanks for input and let me try to make the problem clear, The MacBook Air has only one usb port, the MacBook Air super drive must be connected directly into this port in order to work. It will not work anywhere else, it will not work through any kind of hub/splitter or cable, it will only function when connected directly to the Air. I have tried all kinds of hubs and cables both inert and powered. It has an electronic-hand shake to the Air that enables it. This hand-shake will not work through any kind of cable or hub. I am hoping some geek ( no disrespect intended) will figure out a software way around this so I can be online whilst using my superdrive.

Can you return the Macbook Air specific model and replace it with a standard external DVD burner? It won't be as sleek, but it would certainly work with a hub.

Oh. Did I misread your post? I thought maybe you didn't have a USB hub. I didn't realize. I'm sorry.

cwa107 said:

Can you return the Macbook Air specific model and replace it with a standard external DVD burner? It won't be as sleek, but it would certainly work with a hub.

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That was going to be my exact reply!

I have heard from many that the DVD drive for the Air will not work on any other Mac so I am not too surprised there is this issue either. Take that drive back and get a normal external DVD drive. That should work.

Do we have any other users here at Mac Forums with the Air and the Apple DVD drive? Are any of you having the same issues?

I can confirm that the MBA Superdrive will only work with the Air and only when connected directly. It will not work with an unpowered USB hub.

I never did get around to trying it with a Powered USB hub, so that may work.

I just want to make sure you come out of this with the right understanding. ALL hard drives (anything that can store files) has to be formatted to be able to put ANYTHING on it. By having this done, you lose a certain percentage of drive space. It's just how having a drive formatted "works". It's not an "issue", it's just a fact of life, and it's how formatting works. You can't get around this in any way, it's just how things are. Anyway, enjoy your new MBA!

tjbackstage said:

I just want to make sure you come out of this with the right understanding. ALL hard drives (anything that can store files) has to be formatted to be able to put ANYTHING on it. By having this done, you lose a certain percentage of drive space. It's just how having a drive formatted "works". It's not an "issue", it's just a fact of life, and it's how formatting works. You can't get around this in any way, it's just how things are. Anyway, enjoy your new MBA!

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That's not actually the case though. Refer back to my earlier post and D3v1L80Y's. It primarily has to do with how a GB is calculated.