Update: Thinnest notebook crown belongs to Sharp
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The Muramasas from the mid 00s are the skinniest computers we can dig up.
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During his Macworld Expo keynote address on Tuesday morning, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air Tuesday, a computer that the company billed as the world's thinnest notebook -- small enough to fit inside an interoffice mailing envelope. It's priced starting at $1,799.Sporting a silvery finish, the MacBook Air features a 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display -- it saves power and provides "instant on" response from the moment you turn it on, according to Jobs. The device has a slightly wedge-shaped profile that runs from 1.2 inches down to 0.8 inches high. It weighs about 3 pounds, and sports a thickness of 0.16-0.76 inches.The MacBook Air also features a built-in iSight webcam and a full sized MacBook-style black keyboard. The keyboard is backlit, similar to MacBook Pros, and has an ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts brightness. The trackpad is also capable of recognizing multi-touch gestures, similar to using an iPhone or iPod touch.The MacBook Air features a 1.8-inch hard disk drive with 80GB of storage capacity standard. A 64GB SSD drive is also an option. The laptop is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo chip running at 1.6GHz with 1.8GHz available as an option. Jobs noted that Intel was willing to engineer a new version of the Core 2 Duo specifically to Apple's specifications -- it's 60 percent smaller than others.Like the MacBook and the MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air features a MagSafe connector for power. It comes with a 45 watt power adapter. A flip-down door on one side reveals USB 2.0, Micro-DVI (to connect an external display) and a headphone jack. The MacBook Air also includes 802.11n-based wireless networking support and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.Apple estimates that with wireless networking turned on, the MacBook Air can get about 5 hours of battery life.No internal optical drive is included, but Apple will offer a $99 USB 2.0-based add-on. For users that opt not to get the optical drive, Apple is offering a new software feature on this machine called Remote Disk; it enables you to "borrow" the optical drive of another Mac or PC on the same network as the MacBook Air, to use for installing software, for example.Apple's frequently been in the crosshairs of environmental group Greenpeace in recent years. Jobs offered information about the environmental goals behind the MacBook Air -- it has a fully recyclable aluminum case, and is "the first" to have a mercury-free display with arsenic-free glass. All the circuit boards are BFR-free and PVC-free, and the retail packaging uses 56 percent less material than the MacBook packaging.
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Via Technologies, best known for chipsets and tiny motherboards, announces a new design for budget ultramobile computers. Its Nanobook will weigh 1.9 pounds, be capable of running Windows Vista and cost less than six bills.
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roundup Plus: SanDisk to supply Samsung with miniSD...Hitachi unleashes 100GB notebook drives...Web services security outfits merge.
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Students won't have to wear ID badges after all. Also: Intel makes lasers out of silicon&hellip;.  Microsoft plans a new browser&hellip;. and more.
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A new wafer-thin laptop and a movie rental service for iTunes starred in this year&#39;s keynote from Apple CEO Steve Jobs at Macworld Tuesday.The notebook, called the MacBook Air, wasn&#39;t the ultraportable that pundits had predicted, but it is &quot;the world&#39;s thinnest notebook,&quot; according to Jobs, who produced it from a manilla office envelope to make his point.Priced from $1,799, the notebook has a 13.3-inch widescreen display and a full-sized backlit keyboard. To keep the MacBook Air compact, it uses the same 1.8-inch hard drive found in the iPod and a smaller version of Intel&#39;s Core 2 Duo processor built especially for Apple, Jobs said.The model shown at Macworld was in brushed silver. It is three quarters of an inch thick at its thickest part and just 0.16 inch along the front edge, Jobs said. He compared it to another popular thin laptop, the Sony TZ series. At 3 pounds (1.3 kilograms), it is about the same weight, he said, but the new Apple notebook is about half its thickness.&quot;To fit an entire Mac in this thing was a major feat of engineering,&quot; Jobs said.The MacBook Air will ship in about two weeks. It lacks an optical disk drive, which could make it tricky to load software. To get around that, Apple developed a program called Remote Disk, which allows users to download software from the optical drive of a nearby computer using its built in 802.11n wireless connection.The standard configuration comes with an 80GB hard drive, 2GB of main memory, and a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo. Options include a 64GB solid-state drive and a faster 1.8GHz processor.Intel developed a Core 2 Duo chip package for Apple that is 60 percent smaller than the standard version, according to Jobs. &quot;It&#39;s the width of a dime and as thick as a nickel, with 400 million transistors,&quot; said Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who joined Jobs onstage.Apple will sell an optional portable optical drive for $99, Jobs said. He promised a battery life of 5 hours while surfing the Web and with Wi-Fi enabled.Many had expected Apple to announce an ultraportable notebook, which would have filled a gap in Apple&#39;s notebook product line, noted Robbie Laughlin, an assistant retail manager with Apple reseller Carbon Computing in Toronto.&quot;They had a 12-inch PowerBook a few years ago, and I&#39;d like to see something small like that reintroduced,&quot; he said before Jobs began his speech.Still, Apple&#39;s computer business is riding high from the popularity of its iPods and iPhone, Laughlin said. &quot;They&#39;re still on an upswing. We&#39;ve seen a huge uptick in switchers the last six months, people who wouldn&#39;t normally walk into an Apple store.&quot;The other big focus of Jobs&#39; speech was movies, including a movie rental service for iTunes and a new version of Apple TV that allows renting and downloading movies directly to a TV without using a PC.Apple signed major film studios -- Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Disney, Sony, Universal, and Paramount -- to sell movies through the store. Rentals are $3.99 for a new release and $2.99 for older films, or a dollar more for high-definition versions.The movie rentals are available in the United States from Tuesday, and later this year internationally, Jobs said. Apple pledged to have 1,000 films available by the end of February, and films will come to iTunes 30 days after their DVD release, he said. Users will have 30 days to watch a film after renting it, and 24 hours to finish watching it after they have started.Apple TV wasn&#39;t more successful because it was sold as &quot;an accessory for your computer,&quot; Jobs said. &quot;That&#39;s not what people wanted. ... So we&#39;re back with Apple TV 2. It still syncs with your computer [if you want it to], but no computer is required.&quot;Apple TV also received a price cut to $229 from $299. The new version will be available in two weeks, Jobs said, and existing customers will be able to update to the new software.He didn&#39;t show a 3G iPhone as some had expected, but he did announce software updates available from Tuesday, including the ability to map an iPhone user&#39;s location with Wi-Fi hotspots and cellular towers. The iPhone update also lets people send a text message to multiple users.The iPhone shipped 200 days ago and 4 million have been sold since, Jobs said. The software developer kit for the iPhone will ship in February, he said.Jobs also introduced a wireless backup product called Time Capsule, a companion to the&#160;Leopard operating system&#39;s Time Machine, which constantly backs up work to a desktop hard drive. Time Capsule will ship in February and is basically an Airport Extreme base station plus a hard drive, Jobs said, &quot;so you can back up your notebook wirelessly.&quot;Time Capsule will come in two models, with a 500GB offering for $299 and a 1TB version for $499.
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Hitachi increased the capacity of its Travelstar notebook harddrives. The consumer-targeted 5K100 and E5K100 for enterprise applications offer up to 100 GByte
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Mrs Peel's notebook? Review Leather, a material that calls to mind, at one extreme, Diana Rigg, tight thigh-length boots, the crack of the whip and, at the other, well-worn sofas, ancient libraries and the air of long-faded wealth. Somewhere in between sits Asus' latest leather-covered laptop, the W6Fp...â¦
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There are further big doings on the tiny-laptop front, as Everex announced Tuesday that they will indeed offer a model with a 9-inch screen -- answering the unspoken challenge lain down by Asustek's similar news earlier this month concerning their Eee.
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Bigger iPods in January? Toshiba has unveiled what it claims is the world's most capacious 1.8in hard drive, a tiny unit that nonetheless packs in 100GB of unformatted storage space. To achieve that capacity, the company used perpendicular recording.â¦
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Japan's Sharp Corp  on Thursday  unveiled a prototype of what it called the world's thinnest LCD  TV with a main display section only 20 mm thick.
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Apple Computer launched the newest version of its iMac model, which at two inches (five centimeters) is the worldâs thinnest desktop computer, the company said.
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Put it on your desk. We dare you IBM later this year plans to dish out a "desktop" blade box for small- to medium-sized businesses.â¦
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At Macworld, Jobs pulls Apple's long-awaited MacBook Air sub-notebook out of a manila envelope, his way of saying "it's the thinnest notebook anywhere."
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The company shows a flair for design with its new line of notebooks, as it branches out into the consumer retail PC market.
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Notebooks, PCs in five year franchise
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PARIS, Aug 31  - Apple Computer launched here Tuesday the newest version of its iMac model, which at two inches (five centimeters) is the world&#39;s thinnest desktop computer, the company said.