The Fate of Tyrlon and other Dubious Things

Ok, so yes calling a computer sexy is from the techno-geek-lust within me, but the Macbook Air does look sexy!. It is ridiculously thin, yet still has a full-size keyboard and up to a 1.8ghz Core 2 Duo in it as well as iSight, back-lit keyboard, multi-touch trackpad and LED screen. What shocks me the most is that they got a real desktop processor speed capable processor in something so thin!

Apparently they had to ask Intel to shrink the size of the Core 2 Duo chip to something really small: thickness of a nickel, footprint of a dime! Apple must have a lot of sway with Intel to be able to get a custom chip designed but it should bode well for the laptop market in general if Intel sells the chip to the technology industry at large (not sure if Apple has exclusive on it or not).

Apple also crammed in 1 USB 2.0 port, micro-DVI out (you can use a converter to change this to DVI with a dongle I think) and it uses a 45-watt AC adapter. That is some pretty good power efficiency too! I wonder if Intel used a 45nm chip fabrication process to make such a small chip successfully with such low power-usage? They also have no optical drive in it but it does have 802.11n and Bluetooth capability, as well as a headphones jack and 5 hours of battery life with 2GB of DDR standard. It can also access PC or Mac DVD drives remotely so you can install stuff to the machine. This thing is insane!

Haven’t seen a price yet but my guess would be $1500 starting for a notebook that thin with the regular hard drive (Solid-State Disk is also apparently an option!).

Edit: My guess was a little bit low. Starting at $1799 and available in 2 weeks. That is still very competitive with similar (well, there really aren’t any ultra-portables this nice!) laptops.

Edit: A little bit of a wet blanket from the practical side of my brain - thieves are going to love these since they are so light and small they can fit in a standard manila envelope and be the thickness of a few sheets of paper!  Hopefully they include a Kensington lock slot on the thing!

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