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I have a 12.1" Asus UL20A that I bought last December. It isn't as thin as the new Air, of course, but it is a great alternative if you want to spend less and aren't set on a Mac.

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Acer 1810TZ here. Its 11.6", 5 hours battery life, built-in 3G modem, and I popped in an Intel 80GB SSD. 4GB RAM, and it still cost less in total than the base model Air. It ran Ubuntu perfectly out of the box, including 3G modem, making it better than any other OS in terms of ease of setup..

Yours isn't a dual core. The GP's Asus is dual core, but it's about $800 = 1k with a $200 SSD.

FWIW I'm not entirely certain the Air is a good value, & would appreciate a real comparison.

I paid $510 for the Asus UL20A-A1 last December, on an Amazon promo priced at $585 with $75 Amazon gift card included. It looks like Newegg has it NIB for $575 or open box at $452 right now. I upgraded the memory to 4GB for ~$40, but haven't bothered with a SSD. I chose the UL20A-A1 over other makes/models specifically for the SU7300 processor. The SU7300 supports virtualization and has an extra 1MB of L2 cache compared to the SU4100.

The 1810TZ has an SU4100 CPU, which is dual core.

Confirmed, its a dual core 1.3ghz

I have an acer aspire 1410 11.6' runs ubuntu well, 1.2ghz SU2300 (dual core celeron) good alternative as well. and it was only $400

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