Apple’s MacBook Air gets a Penryn speed boost

Seven months after its first announcement at the Apple WWDC in January rumours are surfacing of the first upgrade to the MacBook Air by replacing the existing Merom class processor with a standard Penryn Core 2 Duo.

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The Memron CPU had been modified by Intel specifically to accommodate the (then) unique demands of the MacBook Air. As a result of the constraints of mobile computing in such a thin profile the Merom was only available in 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz versions. Not so the Penryn which could range from 2.26GHz to 3.0Ghz with a 1,066MHz front side bus.

This increase in performance would come at a cost in power consumption and it is assumed that not only would a larger battery be necessary but also a more powerful (60W up from 45W) AC adapter (as used on standard MacBooks). Because of this the Air will lose some of it’s ‘ultralight mobility’ credentials.

Let’s not forget that internal storage costs have fallen in the last seven months so an increase in this area should also be taken into account. Expect 120GB to 160GB option to be available along with the SSD versions

The appearance of the MacBook Air should remain unchanged (Well thank the Gods for that!).

[UberGizmo via JPEGradar]