MacBook Air has non-user-replaceable battery & storage

Word from the scrummage on the Macworld floor is that, smoothly beautiful as it might be, that achingly slender case of the MacBook Air carries with it some compromises.  Of course, having to use adaptors for most things – VGA, ethernet, modem, etc – is to be expected, but less pleasant is the fact that the bottom panel of the notebook is fixed: there’s no way to swap either the battery or the hard-drive yourself.

Of course, with a bit of determination you could likely get inside the Air’s casing and have a rummage with the narrow magic inside, but Apple are obviously expecting customers to be satisfied both with the maximum 80GB on offer and the 5hrs of promised battery life.

That might go down okay with the iPod – which has never had an easily replaced battery or storage – but laptop users, especially road-warriors used to being able to hot-swap batteries when away from a mains supply, may be harder to convince.