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January 16

The MacBook Air

The rumors were true. The MacBook Air, announced by Steve Jobs yesterday, is the thinnest computer ever. Something tells me it’s is going to be a big seller this year.

Starting at $1799, the Air is so thin it can fit inside one of those yellow envelopes (pictured to the right). It’s tiny, and it’s a full-featured Mac. Well, almost full-featured.

To fit a computer into that tiny package, some compromises were made (as usual with ultraportables).

Few upgrades available
Internal Lithium-Polymer battery cannot be swapped-out at will
No optical drive. You can (and will want to) purchase a $99 external DVD burner. There’s a feature that allows you to “borrow” the drive of another PC/Mac via Wi-Fi, but you really should pay the extra $99.
Lack of ports. There is only one USB 2.0 port, a micro-DVI port, and a headphone jack
Internal speakers are mono

Other than that, this is a real cool computer.

The Touchpad responds to several iPhone-like gestures (pinch to zoom, etc).
It weighs 3.0 pounds, and is only 0.76 inches thick.
It has a 13.3 inch display and full-size keyboard (no dedicated numerical keypad, though)
802.11n
1.6GHz Core 2 Duo (or optional 1.8GHz)
2GB of RAM (only option available)
80GB Hard Drive or 64GB SSD (no higher capacities for either)
Onboard Intel GMA X3100 graphics
5 hours of battery life

If you need a thin and light laptop, and can deal with the limitations, this is the computer for you.

Further Reading