UK retailer Dixons is preparing its own MacBook Air rival for the holiday shopping season, in the shape of the Advent Altro. The 13.3-inch CULV ultraportable measures 21mm thick and weighs 1.6kg, and packs 3GB of RAM and an Intel Celeron processor. Unlike the Air, however, the Altro will start at just £600 ($987; the Air retails from £1,149 in the UK).
Since Apple won’t give us the netbook so many people have been calling for, the past six months have seen a surge in Hackintosh netbooks: formerly Linux or Windows XP machines tweaked into running OS X. It’s not exactly allowed in the terms of Apple’s EULA, no, but with the latest drivers it’s not exactly difficult, either; question is, is the machine you end up with worth it? Over at Apple Insider they’ve been running benchmarks on an Advent 4211 (an MSI Wind U100 rebadge), comparing it to a late-2004 G4 iBook and a first-gen MacBook Air.
Hang on, so US customers will be waiting a whole 3-5 weeks to get their hands on MSI’s Wind budget ultraportable, courtesy of Amazon, while in the UK a rebadged version of the notebook is available today? Somewhat conclusive proof that MSI really need to re-examine their supply-chain, UK retailer PC World is shipping its version of the Wind – called the Advent 4211 – already.
JP
