LG has hopped on the Ultrabook bandwagon with its introduction of the super-thin XNote Z330 laptop. It looks strikingly similar to the Apple MacBook Air, and unfortunately also comes with a similar premium price tag.

Macs may be a minority of PCs in any business, but these days they are used by most businesses. And as more companies roll out "choose your own PC" and "bring your own PC" policies, IT will only need to be more familiar with managing Mac OS X systems.

Acer Friday introduced a new, pumped-up model of its Aspire S3 Ultrabook. Acer upgraded the processor and the hard drive in the new Aspire S3; unfortunately, that upgraded the $899 price tag on the older model to $1,299.

The first wave of Intel-inspired Ultrabook laptops meant to challenge the MacBook Air start landing this week with the $US900 Acer Aspire S3-951 eading the way.

Fearing slow sales and a market dominated by Apple's MacBook Air, major notebook makers plan to release a limited number of ultrabook laptops in 2011, according to an online report. Acer, Asus, Lenovo and Toshiba are all producing initial shipments of 50,000 units or less, adopting a wait-and-see approach to Intel's new laptop product category, according to Taiwan-based DigiTimes.

Acer plans to rival the MacBook Air this October with a new 13.3-inch Ultrabook laptop featuring Intel Core Sandy Bridge chips, longer battery life, and solid-state or hard disk storage options, according to the latest rumors. The supposed Acer Aspire 3951 is clearly a MacBook Air-inspired device including design choices such as silver aluminum casing, large trackpad, and chiclet keyboard. Images of the purported new laptop recently leaked online through the Vietnamese site Sohoa.

The success Apple has had with its MacBook Air refresh will likely lead the company to completely redesign its MacBook Pro line in favor of a thinner and lighter form factor.

At the same time Apple released its long-awaited Mac OS X 10.7 Lion (in a first, via online-only distribution), the tech giant also updated two of its Macintosh computers to include the Thunderbolt external bus technology that provides transfer rates of up to 10Gbps and supports storage, network, and video connections. The MacBook Air slim laptop and the Mac Mini small-footprint desktop both now come with Thunderbolt. The MacBook Pro and iMac were released with Thunderbolt ports earlier this year. Only the Mac Pro ships without Thunderbolt.

Anything less than a DIY digital home entertainment project means making the most of Apple TV

Mac shops with significant FireWire investment may not need a total Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 makeover, but staying put with current hard drives and devices will come at a price