MacBook Air: not the world's thinnest laptop

Laptop MacBook Air, recently introduced, can position itself as the thinnest laptop on the market today, but the most delicate in the history of it can not be considered.

In 2003, Sharp has released a laptop Actius MM10 Muramasa, equipped with a 1GHz Crusoe processor from Transmeta, 256MB of RAM, a 15- gigabyte hard drive and Wi-Fi module. The maximum thickness of the laptop was 14 mm. Battery life - 2.5 hours. All this fun cost 1499 U.S. dollars.

Until then, the record belonged to a laptop Pedion, ill-fated joint undertaking of companies Mitsubishi and Hewlett-Packard, model 1997. The thickness of the Pedion sostavlyala18 mm. The thickness of the MacBook Air is 4 mm at the thinnest point and 19 mm at its thickest, that is certainly a loss. Mitsubishi has produced the laptop Pedion since 1998. However, this device could serve as a specimen of low quality or price. With 64 megabytes of RAM and a 1- gigabyte hard drive price was 6000 dollars. For protection against external mechanical damage to the notebook was made of magnesium alloy. However, shortly after it went on sale, fell to the manufacturer's bumps in the form of numerous user complaints on the failure of one or the other node. As a result, production of laptops under the brand Hewlett-Packard ( as far as we know) did not take place.

Other manufacturers are not even close to the bar, taken today, MacBook Air. Except perhaps that model Sony Vaio X505, was issued in 2004. The minimum thickness of it was 10 mm, minimum length - 20 mm. The body of it was made ​​of carbon fiber. The relevant parameters are the finest of the modern Sony laptop series are 20 and 30 mm.

Despite the fact that the project Pedion quickly and relatively easily rested in peace, his cause lives on and wins. It was a laptop with a 12-inch screen is quite considerable for his time, and nearly full size keyboard. In other words, the length and breadth of it were normal, and the thickness - small. Since this formula has gained popularity.

In the past few years, laptop manufacturers are focusing on creating products with a screen diagonal of 15 inches or more, the new field of battle promises to be a diagonal of 11 and 13 inches - so says Lovere Xavier (Xavier Lauwaert), project manager Vaio. Recently, a laptop with a 13- inch screen the company released Dell, 11 - and 13 -inch models also sported at CES 2008 and the company Sony. This category applies to MacBook Air.

... Optical drives will be in the laptop option. In addition, much work will have chemists engaged in the development of new notebook models, and their task will be to create new body materials such as carbon fiber.