Shane McGlaun17 November 2009, 7:00 AM
Shenzhen clones the MacBook Air netbook style.
Apple really started something when Herr Jobs pulled that thin and sexy MacBook Air out of the envelope on stage. What the company started was a hoard of me too vendors rushing thin notebooks to market. The thing that many of them had in common was a very high price; the
original Dell Adamo is a perfect example.
The latest MacBook Air doppelganger to tip up shares a similar profile as the Air, but lacks the style, sex appeal and the massive price the Apple offering commands. The
Shenzhen rig has the innards and price tag of a netbook with more connectivity options than Apple offers on the real deal.
The machine sells for $256 ($US249) and runs netbook hardware. Inside the white chassis is an Atom N280 CPU, 1GB of RAM, 160GB HDD, and a 12.1-inch display. The removable battery has 3,500 mAh of power giving a mere 2.5 hours of use. The manufacturer obviously went with thin rather than long runtime.
One bright note of the Shenzhen unit is that it has a pair of USB ports, HDMI out, Ethernet, audio, and a memory card reader. Several of those connectivity options are things that the MacBook Air lacks. Availability is unknown at this time.