Apple MacBook Air - world's thinnest notebook

The most interesting new product presented today by Apple at MacWorld is the MacBook Air, the firm claims this is world's thinnest notebook. The MacBook Air features a 13.3" LED-backlit LCD display with a 1280 x 800 pixel resolution, weighs only 3 pounds and measures only 0.16" at its thinnest point and 0.76" at its maximum height.

MacBook Air has a vibrant 13.3-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display that is energy efficient, and its spacious trackpad offers multi-touch gesture support for pinch, rotate and swipe, making it more intuitive than ever to browse and rotate photos or zoom into web pages in Safari. MacBook Air features a full-size keyboard design in a sleek and durable aluminum enclosure. The backlit keyboard makes it ideal for dimly lit environments such as airplanes, studios or conference halls, and a built-in ambient light sensor automatically adjusts the brightness of the keys as well as the display brightness for optimal visibility.

MacBook Air delivers up to five hours of battery life for wireless productivity and includes AirPort Extreme 802.11n Wi-Fi networking, which delivers up to five times the performance and twice the range of 802.11g. Apple’s Migration Assistant software now enables users to quickly transfer files, applications and preferences from your old Mac to MacBook Air right over your wireless network.

The MacBook Air will be available in early February. For $1,799 (€1,699 in Europe) you get the following config:

• 13.3-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display with 1280x800 resolution;
• 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB L2 cache (1.8GHz CPU is optional);
• 800 MHz front-side bus;
• 2GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM;
• 80GB hard disk drive with Sudden Motion Sensor;
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100;
• Micro-DVI port (includes Micro-DVI to VGA and Micro-DVI to DVI Adapters);
• built-in iSight video camera;
• built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR;
• one USB 2.0 port;
• one headphone port;
• multi-touch TrackPad with support for advanced multi-touch gestures including tap, scroll, pinch, rotate and swipe; and
• 45 Watt MagSafe Power Adapter.

The system doesn't have an optical drive but you can get the MacBook Air Superdrive for $99. The MacBook Air is perfect for showing off, it's very thin and features an iPhonish multi-touch trackpad but we're not too impressed by some of the other features. The MacBook Air has a slow CPU, slow graphics, a 4200RPM low-capacity HDD, only one USB port and it has no Ethernet so you'll be forced to use WiFi if you want to go online. Oh and another stinker is the battery: just like on the iPod it can't be replaced by the user.