Dell rumoured Air

There is a Dell teaser.

The San Francisco Chronicle are suggesting it will compete with the Air.

Its going to be rather late to catch the Christmas holiday sales.

Edited by deleted (Sun 21-Dec-08 11:22:33)

Hate to say this, but Dell has been clutching at straws lately in order to pull itself back up in the market-share. They introduced their mini line for PCs way before the likes of HP and other top names, but still as of yet have to offer a model that goes beyond a 16GB SSD. I also hear a lot of complaints lately regarding any of their laptop line. Their pricing also has something to be desired no matter what line they are offering. So I would not think that they will be too competitive if they do come out with their version of the "Air".

MacFriar

This is true. I just looked at the Dell Mini 9 which sells for �224. This compares with the Acer Aspire One which I can buy for �175. To my eye, the Acer is more attractive as well as being cheaper.

And with more features available. Dell is riding on their name and figure they can get the extra for that alone. That in my estimation is a poor marketing strategy and will come to bite some of these big manufacturers in the wallet soon enough.

MacFriar

Only competes if you run Windows on your Mac. Otherwise it's just another Windows laptop.

and if it proves popular is there a big problem with that ?

Not sure what you're saying.

I was just saying, if Dell cloned the Macbook air so it was almost identical it would still suffer from not being able to run OSX.

Any non-Apple laptop can't compete directly with an Apple laptop, they don't run the same OS. There are some common applications, but if you want Aperture, Final Cut and Logic there's no point buying something running Windows!

My employer provides me with a Lenovo X60s. To reduce weight, I discarded the battery so it now weighs 1.15kg. That is good weight for a 12" business laptop that is carried daily. If the new Dell can compete with this setup, it will help Dell to regain its share of the mainstream business laptop market.

As for OSX, I don't see its worthwhile paying such a huge premium for hardware that can run OSX. This year I switched from a MacBook to a netbook for my personal computing. My Acer Aspire One running Ubuntu works great and cost me �175. That compares well with the �800 I paid for the last MacBook.

I didn't expect to be so enamoured with the Macbook Air but really I am. It's not just functional as you might expect from a netbook it's amazingly capable; photoshop, flash, logic, aperture and even after effects I've been using no trouble! The 128GB SSD just skips along switching in and out of applications. It runs Second Life at high resolution (one stop down from the max) without any issues at all. I've been quite busy lately with a variety of tasks and so really had the chance to put it through the paces. Screen quality is lovely too. I honestly can't see anything out there competing with the Air except for price and if that's your goal I guess you don't need the feather light, absolutely gorgeous Macbook Air.

You obviously don't run Logic Studio or Aperture then.

I'm all for using Linux for email, web etc..., but it doesn't cut it for professional audio or photography.