Is Apple's MacBook Air a netbook?

After saying for a long time that it would never make a netbook computer, Apple, goes and launches one, or has it? Is the new MacBook Air with the 11in screen a netbook or not and how will it affect the existing netbook market? It's debatable whether the Air is a netbook or not and some people regard it as a netbook competitor, but others don't. It is half way between a netbook and a laptop and it has a bigger screen than netbooks, which are usually 10in. However, it is also smaller than a laptop and usually laptops have screens of 13in or more. Most netbooks come with 1Gb of RAM, but the Air has 2Gb and laptops often have 3 or 4Gb. It has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, which isn't used in other netbooks and the Intel Atom is more common. The MacBook Air is therefore more like an ultra-light, compact and portable laptop.

There are three main selling points for netbooks and the first is that they are true computers. They can run all Windows software and you can attach all manner of peripherals to them, just like a regular computer. You can even format the hard disk drive and intall a different operating system, such as Linux. This is where netbooks differ from the iPad. The iPad isn't a stand-alone computer that can run the software and operating systems used by desktop computers. Of course, netbooks are low powered, so they are slow and you wouldn't want to edit 20 megapixel images in Photoshop, but power aside, they are true computers. The MacBook Air is just as capable of running desktop software as a MacBook and if anything, the Air is more powerful than the current crop of netbooks on the market. The MacBook Air is therefore a winner here.

The second selling point is that Netbooks are small and light. This makes them easy to carry and to store. The Air is slightly bigger than a standard netbook, but not by much and it is incredibly thin. Some netbooks are quite chunky, so here we have a draw and some people might prefer the smaller size of a netbook, but others may like thinness of the Air.

The third selling point of netbooks is their low price. They are the cheapest computers on the market and prices for bottom of the range models are much lower than for laptops. Top of the range netbooks can cost more than bottom of the range laptops and there is some overlap, but not much. If you don't want to spend much money on a computer then a netbook is clearly an option. What about the MacBook Air? It is actually surprisingly cheap for a MacBook and I expected it to cost a lot more, but it is still double the price of netbooks and it obviously won't appeal to the majority of people that buy netbooks.

The price of the MacBook Air puts it in a different market to netbooks and it is also competing with other MacBooks. MacBook and MacBook Air prices are in the same range and so you have a choice of  the light, but low powered MacBook Air, or a bigger and heavier, although far more powerful MacBook for the same price. You would have to really want that portability to choose an Air over a MacBook.

It's interesting to compare a Dell Inspiron M101z with the entry level MacBook Air. They both have 11in screens with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels, they both have 2Gb of RAM, they both have dual core processors (the Dell's is an AMD). The Dell has a 250Gb traditional hard disk, but the Air has a 64Gb solid state drive. The Dell has an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4225 graphics chipset and the Air has an Nvidia GeForce 320M.

So there's not much difference in the specifications of the two netbook/laptops or whatever you want to call them apart from the extra storage offered by the Dell. However, the price of the Dell is literally half that of the MacBook Air. The Dell is £429 and the MacBook Air is £849 including taxes and delivery. That's a huge price difference.

The MacBook will definitely appeal to people that want a small, light and ultra-portable MacBook, but it won't affect the Windows netbook market much. The price difference is just too great. That Dell is one of the more expensive netbooks and there are much cheaper ones and it was only chosen for this comparison because of the similarity in specifications.