It looks as if Sharp actually snagged the title in 2003 with the Actius MM10, but didn't have a guy in a turtleneck to promote it.
After all the buzz surrounding Tuesday’s MacBook Air announcement and the fanboy drooling that came in its wake, someone has already gone and cut down Apple’s claim that the Air is the “world’s thinnest notebook.” Cnet’s Michael Kanellos dug up evidence of it on Tuesday, and then again by a bigger margin on Wednesday with the help of an outside party.
While no one argues that the Air is the thinnest notebook on the market today, Kanellos took on a historical perspective and found some even thinner notebooks from years past. On Tuesday, Kanellos was ready to hand the crown to the Mitsubishi Pedion, which is 0.7244 inches thick at its thickest point, to the Air’s 0.76 inches.
Despite the tiny margin and the Pedion’s exorbitant $6,000 price tag, it looked as if it had captured the win until Wednesday, when a physics professor at Louisiana State University pointed out that one of the laptops from Sharp’s Muramasa line was significantly thinner. The Actius MM10 Muramasa came out in 2003 and measured just 0.54 inches thick, about a third thinner than either the Pedion or the Air. It also cost just $1,499 and had stats that would have been acceptable at the time, like a 1Ghz processor, 256MB of RAM , a 15GB hard drive and built-in Wi-Fi. Oddly enough, it was actually Kanellos who covered the Actius MM10 for Cnet back in 2003, though he can certainly be forgiven for forgetting the exact dimensions nearly five years later.
And what does the true world’s thinnest notebook go for these days? About $230 with a broken LCD.
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RSSI own a Sharp MM10 and it's great! Light, easy to use and does everything I need a second PC to do. It's been stunningly reliable over the last four years - a really well built machine. I use it all the time as a web surfing machine and for work out of the office. Yeah, it's a bit slow but then it gives me more back with it's sheer convenience (and it is a pensioner in PC terms).
I did look at the Air and think "wow. a replacement for the old girl" but who needs one when my existing machine fits the bill so well.
So it *DOES* work - brilliantly. It cost me $650 NEW 4 years ago, has twice as many USB ports and I can run things like, uh, MS Office 2007 with the ribbon interface which I love and you can't do natively on the Air.
Beats the pants of the Air as far as I'm concerned!
Who cares if SHARP or WHOEVER had already made the true "first" thinnest computer IF THEY DID NOT WORK?
What is the point of having something that is useless and horribly ugly? What is the point of having a product that will be of no use to the customer?
Unlike the Apple MacBookAir, the operating system of these computers made them totally unreliable and user UNFRIENDLY.
It's like claiming to have made the tallest building but it fell down, or the fastest aeroplane but it crashed?
Unless one can put the devices CREATED - no matter what they are - to USE (and I mean, reliability, functionality, and above all, affordability) than both SHARP and KENELLO should hide their heads in embarrassment.
The Apple product not only looks good, but, is both reliable and affordable - and the technology that surrounds the MacBookAir is just phenomenal.
Apple, with this item, has leaped frog everyone and has left them far far behind.
Well done, Mr Jobs, you have again left Mr Gates and his cronies gaping for air.
TK.
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