Intel makes MacBook Air processor to other manufacturers

The reduced-size 65nm Core 2 Duo designed by Intel and incorporatedinside Apple's super-slim MacBook Air is available for other computermakers to buy, the chip company confirmed last week.

No great surprise there - Intel's in the business of selling as manychips as possible, not operating as Apple's in-house silicon specialist- but the news hasn't stopped commentators speculating that a raft ofAir-alternatives will be hitting the market in the very near future.
Again, no surprise there. Wherever Apple's innovation - whether it'scome up with idea itself or, more usually, taken an existing productand run with with it, as per the iPod, the iPhone and, now, the Air -takes it, lesser brands are wont to follow. So there will be moreskinny laptops coming, whether Intel makes its physically cut-down CPUavailable to other customers or not.
Come May, Intel will have a raft of low-power, high-performance 45nmCore 2 Duo processors ready for laptop makers. And don't forget'Silverthorne', the 45nm ground-up-design UMPC chip that uses HyperThreading to boost performance while keeping the core count to one.

It's not just the small processor that's made the Air possible.While that helps shrink the machine's motherboard a little, Apple'sMacBook and MacBook Pro mobos aren't exactly large as it is. Neitherare many other laptop boards. What makes the Air possible is thewillingness to drop the optical drive and to use a handheld musicplayer-grade hard drive until solid-state disks become cheap enough tobe offered as standard.
Incidentally, what the Air does have over its rivals - whether youlike the machine or not - is the best casing. Compare it to similarPCs, such as Toshiba's Portege R500, and while the Air is a smooth,solid product, thanks to its aluminium alloy shell, the R500 is clad inflexible plastic that's all humps, bumps and air vents.
Still, while the Air is nicer looking, it's clearly less functional- the R500 has plenty more ports and an integrated optical drive. Watchout for our full review of the Toshiba.