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Apple cuts price of MacBook Air with SSD by $500

By Jacqueline Emigh, BetaNews

July 7, 2008, 10:53 AM

About six months after launching the MacBook Air at Macworld San Francisco in January, Apple has now cut the price of the top-of-the-line edition of its thin and light notebook by $500.

The deluxe model of the MacBook Air -- which comes with a miniaturized version of the 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and a 64 GB solid state drive (SSD) -- has now been reduced in price from $3,098 to $2,598. Meanwhile, the price of the base model -- which uses a 1.6 GHz flavor of the same processor -- is still $1,799.

Apple has also lowered pricing from $300 to $200 on 1.8 GHz processor upgrades and from $999 to $599 on the SSD, an optional feature. The Air ships standard with an 80 GB hard drive.

Apple's price drops on the Air coincide with price reductions by Intel of $100 on the 1.8 GHz processor and $400 on the SSD.

But could demand for the high-end Air be a factor, too? Some users have been complaining vocally online about a price tag of $3,098 for a notebook that includes no optical drive and only one USB port. As some see it, the Air turns in only mediocre performance.

Weighing in at under 3 pounds, the MacBook Air includes a full-sized keyboard and a 13.3-inch LED display. It also ships standard with 2 GB RAM.

Add a Comment (6 Comments)

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By kholdstare

posted Jul 8, 2008 - 11:09 AM

i do not think they would ever be able to make a DVD player thin enough to fit into a macbook air. I wouldn't get one myself because i wold like to have some sort of disk drive on a computer that i can install something from. besides networks are slow when you are installing somthing from a shared drive

Score: 0

By pnutts

posted Jul 8, 2008 - 12:22 AM

Ah... Posts by people who have probably never used one. Same as the iPhone haters. Some people want less weight and more battery life instead of lugging around a DVD burner and a swiss cheese variety of ports. Really, how many USB ports do you need on a laptop? Especially an ultra-portable laptop.

Nobody mentions the Air comes with software that turns any optical drive on your network into a remote drive. Or that a $99 external optical drive not much bigger than the disc itself is available that has no external power, just the USB cable.

After nursing the wife through clunky Windows laptops for years, the Mac platform reduced my support to zero. Because (I assume) it is a closed system the stuff "just works".

Score: 0

By Setian^Stalker

posted Jul 8, 2008 - 5:20 AM

"Nobody mentions the Air comes with software that turns any optical drive on your network into a remote drive. Or that a $99 external optical drive not much bigger than the disc itself is available that has no external power, just the USB cable."

New to betanews i take it. It's been mentioned to death in the past with MacBook Air.
What does people complaining of a lack of dvd burner, usb ports and whatever other features lacking have to do with someone not using one. They are giving reasons why they dont use one.
So I'm sorry but people have every right to complain about those so called problems.

Score: 0

By Dark_Helmet

posted Jul 8, 2008 - 1:45 AM

these are the same people that want $69 Blu-ray players less than 2 years after their introductions....

its crazy...how easily they forget that it takes YEARS for costs to come down on technology...in 10 years we will all have laptops as thin as the MacBook Air...but it takes time for prices to come down...