“The MacBook Air, unfurled [yesterday], might be the thinnest notebook on the market today, but it’s not the thinnest of all time,” Michael Kanellos reports for CNET.
“That distinction belongs to the Pedion, an ill-fated notebook developed by Mitsubishi and Hewlett-Packard back in 1997.The Pedion measured 18.4 millimeters thick, which comes out to 0.7244 inch thick. Although the Air gets to 0.16 inch at the thinnest point, the Air is 0.76 inch thick at the beefiest portion, making it minutely thicker. Mitsubishi released the Pedion in early 1998,” Kanellos reports.
“The Pedion, however, wasn’t exactly the paragon of quality or value. The $6,000 notebook came with 64MB of memory and a 1GB hard drive. The notebook came with a magnesium case to make it sturdy. Even with that, though, consumers quickly reported mechanical and other problems. Mitsubishi subsequently withdrew the notebook from the market,” Kanellos reports.
Full article here.
I am so glad someone got paid to research that.
Award for thinnest deadline without a meaningful topic?
Congratulations, Michael Kanellos, C|Net.
and WHAT??
I doubt that Apple’s marketing will be selling it as the thinnest laptop ever, and this is kind of beside the point. What’s nice, actually, is that all this talk about it is generating buzz. The more people debate about whether this is the thinnest ever, the lightest ever, of whatever else ever, the greater mind share this device will get.
As I said earlier, women will love this one, and that fact should not be underestimated. Their purchasing authority is disproportionately greater than their demographic, and if you have at any point in time in your life sold laptops, you would know that one of the first things women do when they buy laptops is ask how heavy they are.
MBA nails it on the nose with the most optimised feature set and ideal, impossible to match, weight and size.
anticipate AIR features to trickle down to macbooks.
*fingers crossed*
Well, I’d rather be pissed off
than Pedion……
To Air is human….
..To not get, bovine.
@Predrag: Women’s purchasing authority is great, but is it greater than their authority to un-authorize purchases?
i love the macbook air,its like having a second gen powerbook titanium
That’s not the world’s thinnest laptop….that’s the world’s biggest Zip Drive
I think that Pad this is just a software update where you can mulit touch. Though i’m sure jobs will just introduce it into new laptops so you have to get a new laptop instead of a software upudate
@ Predrag
Of course Apple marketing will never be selling it as the thinnest laptop ever.
“We’ve built the world’s thinnest notebook — without sacrificing a full-size keyboard or a full-size 13-inch display,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in the press release.
Without difficulty, we all understand that by “the world’s thinnest” Mr Jobs does not mean “the world’s thinnest” but “the thinnest notebook PCWorld has measured this year (through 16/01/08)”.
To Chris ][: That was very funny!
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The Pedion takes up much less space in the landfill. Tell Greenpeace.
The article says that the Pedion is 18.4 millimeters thick, making it .7244 inches thick. Ummm, last time I checked, 16 millimeters = an inch, so how in the heck is 18.4 mm less than an inch? Unless they incorrectly reported the Pedion measurements, the MacBook Air would still hold the record as the thinnest laptop ever! Maybe they’re doing that new kind of math…
Yet it has a 12.1-inch screen, a 1-GB hard drive, and a 233-MHz Pentium with MMX. The Pedion’s base unit doesn’t include a CD-ROM drive. A modular docking station, called the multimedia slice, weighs 2 pounds and houses a floppy drive, a 20X CD-ROM drive, I/O ports, and an additional universal serial bus (USB) port. Another slice adds an additional lithium-polymer battery to increase estimated battery life from 2 to 8 hours. At press time, the unit was available only in Japan at a starting price of about $4900.
Only $4,900………that would be 1997 prices.
HEY, HEY, watch that claim, boy!!! LOL
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Actually, how do you measure “thin” or thinest??? Is it the smallest dimension, the thickest, the average dimension???? If the cover opens up 180 degrees, can you then suggest that it be measured only with the cover open????
Hey, if the MDA edge were any sharper, you could shave with it. I know, I have razors that dull.
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en
“last time I checked, 16 millimeters = an inch”
Last time you checked it, you checked it wrong.
Check it again: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=1+inch+in+mm
@ Confused
It’s 1 inch = 25.4 millimeters.
Ya got the Internet right there, check it.
If you want to get nitpicky, you could say that the MBA is actually somewhere around .42″ thick on average. Either way, I don’t think anyone is really going to care that some failure from 11 years ago was .0356 inches thinner.
For goodness sakes.
For the obtuse or otherwise:
It’s the thinest laptop computer you can currently buy.
Next subject.
Apple is calling it Thinnovation.
“last time I checked, 16 millimeters = an inch”
Come on, man, that is only during daylight savings. Get your facts straight, dude. You’re playing with real grown ups here. Kinda.
“The article says that the Pedion is 18.4 millimeters thick, making it .7244 inches thick. Ummm, last time I checked, 16 millimeters = an inch, so how in the heck is 18.4 mm less than an inch? Unless they incorrectly reported the Pedion measurements, the MacBook Air would still hold the record as the thinnest laptop ever! Maybe they’re doing that new kind of math…”
@Confused
lol, your name is very appropriate. 1 inch = 25.4mm the article is correct.
Wow. Quite impressive they managed to make such a thin laptop 10 years ago. Too bad that it (and other portables of its kind) flopped, we might have had superthin computers for a longer time by now.
Which would you rather have? Six inches or 228.6 millimeters?
I like the Dell website that claims their XPS with the 13.3 inch screen is the thinnest laptop with that screen size ( or it used to be). The measurement they used is at the front edge of the KB, never mind that the back edge is twice as thick as a MacBook.
How dumb do they think people are? Oh wait, they are buying things with Windows installed, so I guess they’re pretty dumb!
“Quite impressive they managed to make such a thin laptop 10 years ago.”
Yeah, but it was pretty useless since it also ran Windows. It was a lousy doorstop too.
@ TT
“You’re playing with real grown ups here.”
You take that back!
I’m releasing a new product called the MacromancerBook Pulp. It is almost as thin as a human hair, and includes a stylus made by Bic. You just write on it what you want and even allows you to flip it over and write on the other side.
It retails for $.03 and when you fill up the screen, you throw it away and get a new one.
News flash, Snow White isn’t the “fairest of them all”, either.
Why isn’t Kanellos dissing Disney?
Today I’m announcing a new disposable paper thin notebook called the Wipe.
It’s 4 inches square, two plies thick and comes in white and shades of Zune. When you are done with it, you drop it in the bowl and flush.
Apple will never beat me! BWAHHHHH!
Wow some people actually read CNET articles and news? Both CNET and ZDNET are true echelons of journalistic integrity. If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.
Hold your horses folks. I just want to remind everyone about MS big announcement yesterday. Truly in which case has the MS Zune users MS affiliates creaming with excitement. Yes a new red paint job on that Zune! Truly a remarkable piece of technology. They spent 5 years working on this. Over 1000 engineers at one point touched on this project. Fantastic. Zune users are the envy of everyone who has ever owned a personal multimedia player.
Average out 0.16in and 0.76 in and one gets 0.46in so the MacBook AIR STILL IS the ‘thinnest” notebook ever!! =)
16 mm = 1 inch….hahahaha glad Canada switched to the metric system a long time ago.
THis is why American women can’t drive. The guys keep telling them that 96 mm = 6 inches.
Apple…thin differently
“Snow White isn’t the ‘fairest of them all’, either.”
I think that had more to do with what she was charging the dwarfs. And everyone thought it was fair. Except Grumpy, of course.
I hope that Apple brings out a MBA with a 12″ screen. It would fulfil our desires for the 12″ PowerBook G4 still unfulfilled.
By average thickness (or thinness), the MacBook Air is probably the thinnest. Who said measuring at the thickest point was the definition of “thin”? If you look hard enough, there are probably some Windows CE -based notebooks thinner than 0.76 inches, but it’s the amazing degree of tapering that makes the MBA seem really thin. I saw it at MacWorld yesterday. Amazing.
Ampar,
“I think that had more to do with what she was charging the dwarfs. And everyone thought it was fair. Except Grumpy, of course.”
Thank goodness Doc was able to treat all of their STDs. She was such a tramp.
The journo has got it wrong again. While the pedion is (was) thin. The Toshiba Portege R100 was thinner at its widest it was (is) 0.7″ thick though at its thinnest still thicker than the MacBook Air.
On the other hand it was a compromise on battery life (it did provide for an external clip on battery) and processor speed and HDD capacity etc. Screen size was smaller too.
As I used one for about 2 years I can say that this ultra thin form factor is very useful and the MacBook Air appears to address the shortcomings that annoyed me about the R100. Of course the Air also runs OSX which is clearly much better as well.
Still I think I will wait until I can get an Air with 128Gb SSD – just gotta have that space.
…but with it’s 300:1 contrast matte display, it captivated millions.
I don’t get their point – the slogan is “The worlds thinnest notebook” not “The worlds thinnest notebook EVER” so I don’t get what this has to do with anything… Apple currently have the worlds thinnest notebook.
The Sharp Muramasas was 30% thinner and lighter than the MBA. That’s quite a lot really!
The Sharp Muramasas was 30% thinner and lighter than the MBA. (0.54″ thick, 2.1 pounds weight) That’s quite a lot really!