An interesting thing happened the other day. I was lugging around my monolith of a Dell… An interesting thing happened the other day. I was lugging around my monolith of a Dell Inspiron laptop and cursing the very day I bought it, thinking ultimately that I would love a little laptop that I could just throw in my bag and go, when a friend told me about the new, upcoming Apple sensation that everyone is apparently talking about.

It’s called the MacBook Air, and it’s designed to be one of the lightest, thinnest and most portable laptops on the market. Apple would like to think that it may take over the laptop market and beat out the smallest competitors from other companies because the MacBook Air has something that many competing laptops don’t: a smooth appearance that upholds the reputation for stylishness that Macintosh has enjoyed for so long.

Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely love Macintosh computers and plan to replace my Dell with a brand-spanking-new MacBook when it goes to its great reward. From further investigation into the MacBook Air, though, I have decided that I will not invest the additional funds to make my computer an inch thinner.

Despite my reluctance to spend the extra money, I must admit that the MacBook Air is a very attractive piece of technology. When closed, the entire case is about three quarters of an inch thick. It weighs just 3 pounds, and like its standard MacBook brethren, it sports a crystal-clear 13-inch display and a standard laptop keyboard for easy interaction. It is designed for ultimate portability and includes an onboard wireless card that easily supports all up-to-date wireless protocols.

The MacBook Air is not a full laptop in many common definitions of the phrase, however. It doesn’t have an optical drive, and it relies on external drives to read data from CDs or DVDs. Apple solved this problem – or at least made it a tad more convenient – by inventing a way to utilize the CD or DVD drive from a nearby computer as if it was locally connected to the MacBook Air. a

This does, of course, require you to have an additional computer with the type of optical drive you wish to utilize. It also slightly cuts down on speed, as the computers need to communicate through channels that are slower than having the optical drive connected locally.

If you are willing to spend an extra $99, you can also have a dedicated, external USB SuperDrive, allowing you to read and write CDs and DVDs.

With the MacBook Air, Apple has started its Flash revolution: Apple is a big proponent of creating solid-state memory using Flash, as well as replacing cumbersome and often problematic magnetic hard drives with Flash technology.

In addition to the standard hard-drive feature, you can buy a MacBook Air with a smaller Flash-based solid-state hard drive. Unfortunately, doing so will drop your storage space from 80 gigabytes to 64 gigabytes and cost you $3,098. This is a tad expensive but still possibly the wave of the future.

The ultimate attraction to the MacBook Air that will probably drive most of its sales is the fact that it’s so small and portable. At only 3 pounds, it’s significantly more portable than my 7-pound Dell brick. I would love to haul around a 3-pound laptop for class. Unfortunately, I like my money too much to pay the MacBook Air’s $1,799 base price.

Personally, I applaud Apple for coming up with such a stylish piece of technology. It will at least make many of the other laptop manufacturers think about developing cheaper, more powerful and more convenient ultra-thin, ultra-light MacBook Air competitors.

Ultimately, I think that Flash memory will become cheaper and more available in everyday laptops. More and more thinner laptops like the MacBook Air will undoubtedly become available on the common market.

If I were to buy a new computer right this second, however, I could not bring myself to pay Apple $1,800 for a laptop with comparatively little storage space lacking an onboard optical drive.

I’d look more toward the Asus EEPC for an affordable, ultra-portable laptop – it only runs about $500. If you are interested in the MacBook Air or have more money than you know what to do with, you can learn more at Apple’s website.