'Light' Competition for Apple's MacBook Air

Word on the street is that Apple's MacBook Air has to face yet more competition, following debates concerning which between Apple's laptop and Lenovo's ThinkPad X300 is a better computer. Frontier has adopted an aggressive attitude prepping to launch its FRLN which is both lighter and sturdier than the Air. The FRLN also does pretty well at keeping a low power consumption level.

Frontier's laptop, however, is thicker than its American counterpart, according to electronista, but it's smaller in overall size, sporting a 12-inch LED-backlit screen (one inch smaller than the Air's) and weighing just 2.75 pounds. Also, the FLRN is said to withstand up to 265 pounds of pressure, while dropping it from up to 2.5 feet will leave the system intact. Its keyboard is water resistant too. Not that anyone's going scuba diving with their laptop, but the feature should protect against spills.

Strangely enough, Frontier has gone with the same 800MHz Intel A110 processor as found in UMPCs. This is, of course, the main reason behind low power consumption. As the same web site informs, even with the small standard battery the FLRN can provide up to four hours of working time, while the extended battery will keep it up and running for 8.5 hours.

The FRLN comes with 1GB of memory, 80 gigs of hard drive capacity and 802.11g Wi-Fi. No word on an optical drive or available ports, but unless you reckon it has USB ports all around its edges, it would be stupid of us to consider that the only existing USB port on that laptop is the one we see in the image above (click to enlarge).

Whatever the specs say, the Air is still far sexier, so I guess it's just a matter of what kind of laptop users are currently dominating the market - show-offs (Air), or working people that care less about how their laptop looks and more about how it performs (Frontier's FRLN, Lenovo's ThinkPad X300 and a couple more).

The FRLN will be available in Japan towards the end of March for around $1,300. The US will not benefit from an "official" launch, according to electronista.