14 DAY TRIAL // With Intel's Sandy Bridge platform being right around the corner, in both its mobile and desktop incarnations, more and more rumors regarding future systems built around the new CPUs have started to appear online, the latest referring to one of Apple's best-known portable computing systems, the MacBook Air.
And although some of you (especially Apple's fans) might have hoped that we were talking about a possible MacBook Air – Sandy Bridge type of announcement, the truth of the matter is that we're referring to something quite different, namely a couple of future Sandy Bridge – equipped notebooks that will actually attempt to dethrone the Air from its current position.
We've recently had the chance to go for an in-depth, hands-on experience with the 11-inch, late 2010 MacBook Air (which we'll share with you in the near future), and we can honestly tell you that creating a computing system that will really be able to take on the Apple ultra-thin, ultra-portable computing system heads-on will be a pretty difficult task.
However, as Digitimes reports, it seems that Acer, Asus and Lenovo are actually up to the task, since the three companies are actually getting ready to launch 13.3- to 14-inch notebooks that feature ultra-thin designs and are built around the Sandy Bridge platform by the end of Q1, 2011.
Apparently, one of the factors that made possible this serious shrinkage is, beside SSDs, some streamlining occurring in the field of displays, current LCD panels being 3-5mm thinner than previous models.
Unfortunately, for the time being, very little info on these forthcoming computing solutions has been provided, but given all of the three notebook manufacturers' extensive experience in this field (Asus recently unveiled such an ultra-thin product called U36), we can really say that they'll do their best in order to come with some true MacBook Air killers, no matter just how difficult such a process might prove to be.