Apple's MacBook Air ultra-thin could spawn improved PC notebooks

Weighing in at around 3 lbs., selling for $1,799, and outfitted with an 80GB hard drive (a very, very thin hard drive considering the maximum thickness of 0.76 inch), the MacBook Air may be the perfect machine for the executive on the go. Of course, the fact that it's a Mac and not a PC is likely to be a showstopper for many, but in 2008 that barrier is a whole lot less valid than it was a decade ago.

A feature with which I'm especially impressed is the storage option. Toss in another thousand dollars, and you can replace the 80GB drive with a 64GB flash-based solid state drive. We're all spoiled these days and look upon 64GB of storage as paltry, especially compared to the inexpensive 750GB desktop hard drives that Seagate is cranking out by the trainload. But again, for the executive crowd and perhaps engineers or architects on a job site, instantaneous, reliable storage with no spinning disks or heads to crash is a feature too alluring to ignore.

For most users, 80GB is plenty of space. The new Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac requires 1.5GB of drive space. And typically, Office documents are fairly small. Adobe's Creative Suite 3 Design Premium edition needs 5GB of space. Of course, some Adobe files (ultra-high-resolution Photoshop images with many layers, for example) can grow to several gigabytes in size.

Streamlined to the limits of credulity, the MacBook Air still manages to include a 13.3-inch widescreen LED (yes, that's LED, not LCD) display and full-size backlit keyboard.

One thing that's not clear until you read the specs is that the add-on CD/DVD drive is an additional $99 -- and absolutely necessary. With it you can "install new software" among other things. Installing software is certainly something I'd want to do. But wait, there's one more small gotcha. Wireless networking is built in, but there's no Ethernet RJ-45 port. That's a $29 adapter that plugs into the unit's sole USB port. Not a big deal, but a minor annoyance. (See the complete specs here).

As I write this column just a few hours after the MacBook Air's debut, I'm already being deluged with e-mail, even from people who have never used a Mac. Some are asking if the time has finally come to make the switch. Frankly, I think that time arrived long ago, but changing platforms is not something which anyone relishes doing. The Mac for years has been the target of far fewer malicious attacks than Windows-based PCs, a darn good reason to give it consideration, but that's a story for another day.

Few integrators sell Apple products, so many will miss out on this stunning piece of engineering. But, perhaps not completely. Where Apple leads, others often follow. Toshiba already offers several ultrathin PCs, including an inch-thick Portege model with 12.1-inch LED screen, 120GB drive, and a built-in CD/DVD drive. That's impressive, too. But I do hope the buzz created by the Apple MacBook Air will translate into more ultra-thin Windows-based notebooks in the not-too-distant future. That will be good for all of us.