MacBook Air now shipping in UK

The MacBook Air has finally gone on sale in the UK - a little under three weeks after Steve Jobs announced the ultra-thin notebook at Macworld 2008.

The 1.36kg laptop is currently the world's thinnest, measuring just under 2cm at its thickest point, tapering to 0.4cm. It packs a 13.3-inch widescreen display, 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, an 80GB hard drive, 802.11n wireless networking and 2GB of RAM as standard for £1,199 - or you could blow an additional £829 and plump for the 1.8GHz / 60GB solid state drive version instead. Eek.

Naturally Apple has had to make some necessary - and controversial - compromises to squeeze a PC into the MacBook Air's slender frame and boost its battery life to a claimed five hours.

These include the complete absence of a built-in CD / DVD drive, and the inclusion of only one USB 2.0 port, one mini DVI output and a headphone jack. Other compromises include the slowest CPU of any currently available Mac, a slow 4200rpm spin speed on the hard disk drive and a non-removable battery.

Success or failure?

The MacBook Air is undoubtedly beautiful, and unbelievably skinny, in the flesh and your heart tells you to snap one up in an instead. Only time will tell whether Apple has another iPod-like success on its hands, or whether the Air will go the way of the G4 Cube.

Would you buy a MacBook AIr? Let us know what you think.