Airis Praxis Slim Air Notebook – Not A MacBook Air Clone Really!
Posted on October 14, 2009
The Airis Praxis Slim Air Ultraslim Notebook does seem like an Apple MacBook Air look-alike. But check out its offerings and you might actually prefer buying the Airis Praxis Laptop. This mobile computer sports a 12” screen, which is slightly smaller than the 13.3” display of the MacBook Air. The former offers a higher resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels when compared to the 1280 x 800 pixels of the latter.
On the CPU front, the Apple notebook has a faster Intel Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz processor; while the Airis Praxis notebook comes with an Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor. The MacBook has a 2GB RAM. On the other hand the Airis Praxis notebook has just a 1GB RAM. Therefore processing speed-wise, the Apple MacBook definitely wins hands down. The operating system for the Airis Praxis device can be one of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Linux. The model comes with Vista pre-installed. The MacBook Air ships with the Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. An nVidia graphics processor has been employed in the MacBook Air, but there has been no mention of what graphics processor is incorporated in the Airis Praxis Notebook.
The hard drive of the Airis Praxis laptop is 160GB capacious. The MacBook Air has a smaller 120GB hard drive. The interfaces present in the Airis Praxis Slim Air include 2 USB ports and an HDMI output; while the MacBook Air includes only a single USB port and a Mini DisplayPort. This Mini DisplayPort can support DVI, VGA, and dual-link DVI for which you’ll need to buy adapters separately. Both laptops have web cameras integrated into them.
Either of the mobile computers support WiFi for internet connectivity. The MacBook Air promises a life of 5 hours for wireless productivity. Hence video playback will get a lesser runtime life. The Airis Praxis notebook claims to deliver a life of 3 hours. Perhaps the MacBook Air might deliver a longer battery life, but, the battery comes integrated and is not removable. On the other hand, the Airis Praxis laptop has a removable battery, which can be replaced after it wears out.
The Airis Praxis Slim Air 12” Notebook weighs 1.2kg, slightly less than the 1.36kg weight of the Apple MacBook Air Notebook. An important aspect to be noted is that the MacBook Air gives the option of including a faster 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and a 128GB solid state drive. At present nothing has been said about opting for a faster processor or an SSD for the Airis Praxis laptop. However, the most interesting part of comparing these slim, stylish and similar looking portable PCs is their prices. The Apple MacBook Air laptop offers cost £1149 and the Airis Praxis laptop deals cost just €399 [~ GBP 372].