Are Apple's new laptops too expensive?

Apple's new MacBooks look and feel fantastic - you should see them at your local Apple store - and they are equipped with the latest cutting edge technology. However, that makes them very expensive. Although they are fantastic computers, in today's economic climate where the value of our property is falling, the unemployment rate is rising, the stockmarket is in turmoil, and money is tight, it seems like a bad time to introduce such expensive computers. Raising prices across the entire laptop range could well put off some potential purchasers. Steve Jobs with his millions in the bank doesn't know how tough it is for the rest of us.

This is why the computer I bought last month was a Windows laptop. For just under £350 I got a really nice laptop from PC World with a 15in screen, 1.8GHz processor, 2Gb RAM, 250Gb hard disk, Wi-Fi, 4x USB ports, and so on. It runs Windows Vista just fine.

I recently mentioned Microsoft's Live Mesh, a great service that puts a folder on your desktop that is automatically synchronised with every other PC that you use. You can save a file on your desktop PC at home or work, fire up your laptop in Starbucks or wherever you use it and there in the Live Mesh folder on the desktop is your file. It's brilliant if you use several computers.
Dropbox is an identical service that does exactly the same. Install the free software and it creates a folder wherever you want it. I prefer the desktop.

The contents of this folder are automatically synchronised with every other computer you install the software on. Within the folder is a Public subfolder and this is one that others can access. So you can put files in there that others can access on their own computers. The rest of the files remain private. It's very similar to Live Mesh, but the software seems a bit more advanced because there are Windows, Mac and Linux versions whereas Microsoft has only got round to producing a Windows version.

I've no idea how these services make money. Microsoft obviously benefits because it's a Windows service, but Dropbox must have to either start advertising or charging at some point. Hopefully, there will be a two-tier service with a free basic account and a paid account with extra facilities. For the moment it's free, so go and sign up.

*Update: A 2Gb DropBox is free, but you can get 50Gb ofr $99 a year.