MSI airs the air book clone

had me laughing so much it even made up for charlies boring nvidia propaganda

Can't wait to install OSX on this bad boy....

Things like this remind me of those Harly Davidson lookalikes that Yamaha keep making. They are, in many ways, vastly superior, to the Harleys they imitate (if any bike, that has been deliberately designed to handle badly, rust when driven within a thousand miles of the sea, and have virtually no brakes, can be judged on its superior merits).

The people who buy these Viragos and DragStars really wanted a Harley Davidson, but they couldn't afford one, so they bought a Yamaha. They tell themselves what everyone else knows, anyway: Harley Davidsons are overpirced, badly-assembled, cranky, unreliable pieces of junk, that only an image-obsessed idiot would want to buy. Japanese engineering is what it has always been, in comparrison.

But deep down, deep down... We all know that they WANTED to buy one. They were just too damn poor to buy a REAL phoney dream, so they bought a fake phoney dream. It's a double-dose of fail. You wanted something that said 'fail', and yet you failed to own it. No amount of tassled jackets and lace-up leather jeans will ever change the fact that these were the guys that wanted a Harley and failed.

You assume that people buy these for the 'dream'. Perhaps you are projecting your own feelings of jealousy towards not owning the real thing, or maybe you are trying to justify your purchases which you based on your 'dream' rather than sound reason.
Ether way back on planet Earth, there are people who want to buy a light laptop for its function and for those, a highly portable computer that satisfies their needs without a huge price tag makes sense :)

Just because a company builds a light weight compact laptop does it mean they are trying to be like Apple? Would that also mean that if Apple comes out with a netbook that they are trying to be like asus? I highly doubt anyone would say that, so why say those who make ultralight laptops are trying to be like Apple? And from the sales of the MacBook Air its not exactly the most successful product to copy. Maybe people just want light laptops?

Most Hardley Doesitson's are lame. The V-Rod and dreviatives are ok, because they have Porsche engineering.

I'd much prefer a decent bike than to one which is a pile of 1960's junk but has a badge recognised by the clueless. What status have you really got when you buy something to be recognised by the ignorant? The status of being a fool.

Harley's start at only £5k new, same price as other cheap bikes.

For the same price as a fast, stylish and exciting Japanese, Italian or British motorbike, you can buy a Fat American with bad brakes, very poor reliability, terrible suspension, low top speed, poor acceleration and only 1 seat.

At least Apple actually use modern machinery under the hood, Hardley Doesitson dont (except for the V-Rod derivatives).

I think that most people who buy Hardly's are afraid of being excited, and would rather pose and be recognised as middle aged or a pensioner who's lost their zest.

I'd like a spin on a V Rod tho ;-)

The Macbook Air has a proper Core 2 Duo CPU, and an NVidia 9400M GPU. Same RAM, slightly fewer ports. (And Apple's bundled OS and software, but that's a moot point.)

The MSI is certainly a lot cheaper, but the corners they've cut to hit their price points make the similarity with Apple's Macbook Air mostly superficial.

Actually, just one... but I like it.

Just what I need, somewhere between a Netbook and Notebook, enough space, size and power to let me do what I need when away from the office, but not more than I need.

If the price is reasonable, I'll grab one and load Win7 on it.

Daniel, your input was maaddd (meaning good); I never laughed so hard at the main article. It's like a spicy article within an article. So yeah, goes without saying that I do agree with and understand what you're saying mate.

I'm almost sure Dan isn't saying that he always goes by this, or that this is THE gospel, but just that, in a kind of rant form, there really are folks that make purchases based off such ideas/strong feelings. The lot of them that do, may even shock us if the figures were truly made known to us, who knows? (don't say Gartner...)

As much as I don't really appreciate Apple-created stuff (personally, too sandboxed/priced far up-market), but I'm well-pleased that they're in the market to foster rich 'emotional innovation' with their products, which really causes others to take note to the point of placing said fruity design cues into their own builds, which lead to more options/SKUs for the end consumer.

I can’t imagine how things would be without Apple waking up the industry ever so often with their gotta-have-'em toys when things seem to be going slow or emerging trends are creeping in. They easily go on to more quickly foster broader pace in the marketplace overall; for the most part, when they come out with some 'thing', it's pretty solid and it typically stands out. And when it stands out, others look on in awe & wonderment and straight-way position their stuff to siphon off of fruit-themed success. Anyone in their respective markets who is like an Apple usually experiences said ripples, and you can bet, end users really do look at these things a lot of the times, and then make decisions based on it, not much unlike those struck by odd cases of 'Me-too-ism'.

Oh boy, is this article serious? The X340 is a "Air wannabe" that looks vaguely like the real thing but is still far from being a competitor, and not only of the Air but also of many lightweight modern laptops... Poor material choice, cheap plastic, low specs, limited battery life... anything else? Maybe you can call fool one that spends more money to buy an Air (but you always pay more to be on the edge), but throwing money in this loser is even worse: you pay for the looks, you get a poor, good looking laptop...

lol. title says it all. the assumption that there stealing from anyone is outdated. the design looked nice. so they immolated it, atleast there not charging the same, there giving us all a chance to own something we think is decent looking. atleast no real consumers will see it and go "that copies a mac" i mean.. how many people actually watch apple design's that aren't drawing apple tree's in a art class....(that was meant as a cut.)

You rule! :-)

-a fake phoney dream -LOL

you still cant beat a Mac..end of!

If the only thing commendable left in a Harley Davison is its look, what is so wrong for Yamaha to adopt it but change everything else?

It would have been easier for Asus to copy Apple design cues since some Apple products are OEMed by Asus!

MSI X600 running Ubunto Netbook Remix would have been a better package to introduce.

Why are you trying to compare "netbook" to a Mac Book Air, when the architecture is totally different - core 2 duo compared to an atom processor. Of course the Mac will cost more - the "innards" are are more expensive then what's in the MSI's.