Apple's new Macbook Air

Inspired by iPad, the new MacBook Air features all-flash storage, full Multi-Touch support, a long-lasting battery, and a high-resolution display.

Since the laptop's launch back in the heady days of 2008, it has been considered a niche, high-end product and much less a mainstream system. Originally, the wafer-thin (and somewhat underpowered) laptop sold for a painful starting price of $1,799. We've come a long way from Apple's original play, with two all-new models of the Air. The first is an update to the standard 13.3-inch model priced at a significantly cheaper $1,299, while the newest entrant to the MacBook family is a tiny 11.6-inch model that's nearly the size of an iPad -- and not wildly more expensive, starting at $999.

The new MacBook Airs don't look wildly different than their predecessors, but they certainly feel more solid than previous generations. Besides having trimmed down here and there, Apple's unibody construction seems more fully realized on these laptops, and holding one in your hand (or on your lap) definitely promotes a feeling of confidence in build quality. The laptops have been trimmed down -- the 13.3-inch model measures just 12.8 inches by 8.94 inches (with a thickness of 0.68 inches tapering to 0.11 inches at its smallest point), and weighs a meager 2.9 pounds. The minuscule 11.6-inch version, meanwhile, is just 11.8 inches by 7.56 inches, and weighs 2.3 pounds. We spent a lot of our time with the junior laptop, and we can tell you that even next to its big brother, it does feel amazingly small and light. On the other hand, the new 13 is much more of an iterative refinement of the previous-gen Air -- they're virtually the same size, with the new Air just a hair thinner than the outgoing model, but its squared-off sides and sharper edges make it feel a bit more compact, and Apple's buttonless trackpad replaces the older single-button affair. It's weird, but the old 13-inch Air almost seems chubby in comparison to the new model.

Inside the 13.3, the base configuration is a 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo CPU (yes, the very same as the previous version), an NVIDIA GeForce 320M integrated GPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD. Those options can be changed to include a 2.13GHz CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. The 11.6 comes in even lower, starting out with a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, the same GeForce 320M, 2GB of RAM, and a 64GB SSD, and can be bumped to 1.6GHz, 4GB of RAM, and 128GBs of storage. One thing to point out -- the "SSD" chips are not enclosed in a drive housing, and Apple simply refers to them as flash storage. We tested the 11.6-inch with the base 1.4GHz CPU, 2GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage, and the 13.3-inch with a 1.83GHz CPU, 2GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage.

Definitely a must have for road warriors and apple evangelists alike.