Pft!

Where is that ‘wanking’ hand emoticon when you need it?

Let's see, how does my Sony SZ stack up against the Wind, err, the Air:

Both computers appear to have 13.3" LED screens running 1280x800x32, built-in web cams with microphones, a keyboard and a touch pad, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Both have about the same exterior dimensions though at 1" at its maximum the SZ is indeed a bit thicker than the Air. But at 3.7 LBS with the slim-line battery the SZ is nearly as light as the Air at 3 LBS - particularly considering the SZ has a built-in optical drive.

The SZ has two USB 2.0 ports, the Air only one, the SZ has a Firewire port, the Air has none, the SZ has both a PCMCIA slot and an ExpressCard 34 slot, the Air has neither, the SZ has a built-in CD/DVD/R/RW drive, the Air none. The SZ has a multi-format flash card reader, the Air doesn't.

The SZ has both Intel integrated GMA 950 graphics for extended battery life and discreet nVidia Go7400 graphics with 128 MB of dedicated VRAM for performance. The SZ has a pair of stereo speakers with three standard sized ‘mapable’ audio in/outs, the Air has a mono speaker and a single mini-audio jack.

The SZ has a choice of a slim-line battery good for 4.5 hours or an extended battery good for 6-7 hours - both user replaceable. The SZ has built-in WWAN, the Air doesn't.

The standard Air uses a slow 4200 RPM hard drive, the SZ a much faster yet still efficient 5400 RPM model [or 7200 if you choose]. Both have the option of using slow and expensive solid-state HDs.

And finally, while the Air uses a crippled Intel CPU the SZ uses a fully functioning Intel Core2 Duo whose power can be easily managed to extend battery life or run apps at full throttle when on AC.

Yeah, if all I was doing was checking e-mail and some light word processing/Internet surfing then maybe the Air would be a viable alternative. But for anyone needing to do any real computing the Air, at about 15% lighter than the SZ but with only 1/3 the equipment/features/performance onboard is just another Apple fanboy fashion piece.

No thanks...