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Gallery: A guide to the new MacBook Air and Mac mini

A look around the new features and technologies of the new MacBook Air and Mac mini.
By Zack Whittaker, Contributor
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Starting at $999 for the U.S. market and at £849 for the U.K. crowd, the new MacBook Air comes with the technology we had previously expected.

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For more on the new MacBook Air, visit the iGeneration column, where you can find details specifications and further analysis for the education market.

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It comes with a 64GB solid state hard drive minimum, which is expandable to 128 and 256GB. It also has 2GB RAM as standard, but is upgradable to 4GB, and includes Thunderbolt I/O technology and a glass multi-touch trackpad.

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While the thumbnail to this picture makes the MacBook Air look fat and thick, it is actually incredibly thin -- at less than 0.11" thick at its thinnest point — 0.68" at its thickest.

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The updated line of MacBook Air's are in 11" and 13" inch models. Not only does the new MacBook offer vastly greater technology than its predecessor, it also comes pre-installed with Mac OS X Lion.

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The MacBook Air has a backlit keyboard, so that users can use the keyboard in the dark.

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Apple also released a new version of the Mac mini. The new Mac mini is 7.7-inches square and 1.4-inches thin and comes with new dual-core Intel Core i5 or Intel Core i7 processors, AMD Radeon HD 6630M discrete graphics, Thunderbolt I/O technology, and Mac OS X Lion.

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The new Mac mini is available through the Apple Store today and in Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers starting July 21. It starts at $599.

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The new Mac mini will come with the new Mac OS X Lion installed. Lion is available from the Mac App Store now, though many have complained that they cannot yet download it through massive demand for the new operating system.

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An HDMI port allows you to plug the Mac mini into a big screen TV. Though the Mac mini may be small in size, it offers vastly the same functionality as the desktop iMac version, and that of the MacBook -- in that it is portable and runs Mac OS X.

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The new Mac mini has a slot that lets you add memory. 

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The new Mac mini contains new Thunderbolt technology for its I/O system. Apple claims it is twelve times faster than FireWire 800 and up to twenty times faster than USB 2.0.

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Mac OS X Lion Server is also available at around $50 from the Mac App Store -- to allow multiple users on a network with file sharing, designed for businesses and schools.

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