Responding to their customers’ garish ineptitude in trying to outprice the $999 MacBook Air, Intel has decided to do notebook makers’ work for them and put together a reference bill of materials on how to build cheap ultrabooks capable of competing Apple’s superslim ultraportable.
Digitimes reports that Intel has provided two reference designs: one for 21mm ultrabooks starting at between $475 and $650 to put together (excluding assembly costs), and another reference design for 18mm ultrabooks that would cost between $493 and $710.
Note that both of these designs would be thicker than the MacBook Air’s 17mm. Worse, because Apple has locked up all of the CNC lathes required to make unibody magnesium-aluminum chassises, most of these MacBook Airs will use fiberglass instead, which should shave another $50 to $100 off the build price.
So maybe there’s hope after all for notebook makers looking to deal with the threat of the MacBook Air. They’ll probably be able to match the Air’s $999 entry-level price, but only by making their machines thicker than the Air, cheaper than the Air and with inferior software to the Air.
Remind you of anything? Yeah… these same bozos’ attempts to compete with the iPad.
