Cut-price Air rival on the way from Quanta

One day someone will unmask these shadowy "industry sources" but for now we'll content ourselves with the tasty tit-bits of information they drip feed into the industry press. Latest morsel is that Taiwan's Quanta (which builds the new 17in MacBook Pro for Apple among other things) is prepping a cut-price rival for the MacBook Air.

According to said industry sources it'll have a de rigeur 1-2cm thickness as befits its ultra-thin laptop tag. That brings it into direct competition with both the 19.4mm Air and the 1.3kg and 19.8mm X-Slim 320, which MSI unveiled at CES.

Challenging them both, the Quanta machine is said to be both cheaper than the Air and "higher quality" than the X320, making it an intriguing proposition.

Course, it'll need to squeeze in at under 17.9mm if it wants to take the "world's slimmest" crown, currently held by HP's sex on a (very thin) stick, Voodoo Envy 133 - although, at $2099 (no we still don't have UK availability), we doubt the Quanta machine will be treading on HP's toes in the battle for buyers.

There's no word on just when we'll see this high-quality, low-priced slip of a thing, or what hardware will be packed, sardine-like inside - small form factor Intel Core 2 Duo, like the MacBook Air, or Intel Atom, like the MSI X320. But with the Air already on its second outing and the X320 due out by March, it better get its skates on.

[ Digitimes]