http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-co ... now-991083

Hmmm...

I like the idea of high power and portable but doubt that they will take such a huge slice of the laptop market unless they become seriously cheap. $1000 is still a lot for a laptop nowadays.

We are talking a MacBook Air class of device here - the cheapest that Apple produces, and that comes in at $1,000 - which is why Intel are targetting below this level. There will still be cheap, clunky laptops, this will sit between the clunky netbooks and the current ultra portables, which often cost well over $2,000.

Yes I appreciate that it is aimed at the Macbook Air market. It is still pricey. Though $1000 for such a machine is getting very attractive as an option. The Macbook Air is overpriced. I would love one, though not at the price wanted. Then add in the cost of Apple care and it gets very expensive.

We have to wait and see what the opposition do before we can say the Air is overpriced surely? Everyone said the iPad was overpriced, yet pretty much every other comparable tablet (not the 99 quid jobs, which aren't at all comparable) costs roughly the same.

This something that has been perplexing me for a while - Apple are supposed to have profit margins which are much better than any other PC maker, yet (as we've had the discussion about several times) if you actually go like for like, their prices aren't so much more expensive to account for the extra profit margin. So where is the extra profit coming from? Is it simply down to economy of scale, that Apple are buying so many memory chips and hard drives and CPUs that they can get a massive unit discount from the manufacturers?

Jon

Yes but the whole ultrabook market is overpriced. Yes the Air is competitive compared to them. The recent upgrades were better value. Still not low enough for me to consider. It does not have to be as low as other cheap laptops as the lightness is a virtue in itself. The SSD is also worthy of a price premium. It is getting to the point where I am getting interested. I would prefer a more powerful processor though that is my preference.

Is it really? Surely you get what you pay for - they're twice the price of models that are half the quality.

I think current ultraportables are about right. £1400 gets you an i7 with 8gig of RAM with an SSD, decentish screen and discrete graphics in a 13" package weighing less than 2kgs and lasting 5+ hours on battery.

4 years ago, £1500 got me a C2D 2Gig with 2gig RAM a 7200rpm HDD, decentish screen and very powerful discrete graphics in a 17" package. It weighs 4.5kg and lasts less than an hour on battery now, but even then it was two tops.

But if they COULD pull it off for a grand, [LIFTED] me I'd buy one. In fact, I'm hoping by the time I'm looking to ship out again in early spring next year, there will be something for me to look at in IvyBridge.