Earlier this week I was bemoaning the clunkiness of my beleaguered pc, while fawning over the bucolic OLPC XO laptop.
But scrub that – there’s a new laptop that could take over my wishlist: the MacBook Air.
At just 0.76 inches (1.93cm) at its thickest point and weighing 1.3 kilograms, Apple’s latest gizmo comes with either an 80 Gigabyte hard disc drive as standard, or 64 Gigabyte solid state drive for an additional $999.

On the less impressive side, the designers have opted to leave the CD and DVD drive on the lab desk to preserve the MacBook’s slimline look, while the $1,799 price tag means it will be a lean 2008 if I succumb to my whimsical fancies.
But of course, I couldn’t possible do without the CD and DVD drive; isn’t that the beauty of laptops, that you can watch movies anywhere, anytime? Okay, there are portable DVD players, but still, it’s as part of a laptop as drizzle is a part of British life.
Nevertheless, it is undeniably impressive and I cannot wait to see what the coming years will bring forth from Apple.
I never use the CD or DVD. You can use the rest of their new features (download the DVD’s to your laptop from iTunes, and watch them wherever you go)
You can also optionally add the USB DVD player. But here’s the thing that bugs me ..
WHY use a $1800 dvd player when you can get one for $100? I’m sure you wouldn’t mind dropping that $100 dvd player, but will hurt if you damaged your $1800 dvd player.
This one sure tops the Sony ultra-slim-ultra-light and it’s a whole $1050 less! That’s the price of a brand new, top of the line (almost) laptop! Sony has been ripping us off all this time I guess!
But here’s where this thing is lacking…
Although it has 802.11n, it doesn’t have any way of adding cellular data capabilities or wimax (except through USB) Which is a big turn off because it’s not built in, and there is no PCMCIA or EXPRESS card slots.
But I’m sure many people will live without all of this and .11n is enough for just about everyone
Best laptop I’ve ever owned had a separate drive. t was Sony. Built in drives isn’t a problem when it saves all that weight.
Not that I ever watch DVDs on my laptop but why not just move over to DivX?