As expected, Steve Jobs announced the new MacBook Air today at Macworld - and I for one am seriously disappointed.

With an 80GB (or 64GB solid state) hard drive, and a maximum 1.8 GHz processor with 2GB of RAM, this is an extremely underpowered machine.

It raises an interesting question about thin clients (I know this isn't a literal Thin client, but I couldn't resist the pun) - how thin is too thin? I'd been looking forward to this announcement, but I won't be buying one, because even if I were to get the new Time Capsule and use it as a wireless external drive, the Air has way too little storage and processing power for even my relatively basic needs.

So it may be very slick and very pretty, but I don't see the argument for buying the Air over the regular MacBook - who are the target customers for a device like this, other than the typical early adopters?

I'm hardly alone in this - as infoSync World's Philip Berne notes, "The Macbook Air comes in at a good price for this market, but we would still recommend a Macbook for Apple enthusiasts who just want something simple. The Air is for road warriors, but it doesn't serve that community as well as it could... Macbook Air users are going to find themselves carrying lots of accessories and extra cables."

And ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes points out another serious problem. "The battery is not user replaceable," he writes. "This is starting to become a trend for Apple. I guess it's a good way to build a level of obsolescence into a product so people come back in the future and buy again. Not sure how ethical, customer-friendly or environmentally-friendly that is, though..."

More here from PC World ... more here from VNUnet ... more here from Red Herring ... more here from Wired ... more here from CNN ... more here from Gizmodo ... and Apple's press release is here.