In my column today, I wrote about Apple’s new ultra-mobile notebook, the MacBook Air. This svelte little machine retails for $1799 from Apple’s online and retail stores, but if you live on the hill, there’s a better option. The Cornell Store is now offering orders on the MBA for $1631, (plus New York sales tax), a discount of nearly $200. Keep in mind they only carry the base configuration, with a 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo processor and a regular hard drive, so if you’re looking for other configurations, you’ll still need to order elsewhere.
In other interesting news, the Store is also carrying Asus’s bare-bones Eee PC. This similarly tiny, Linux-powered computer has a 4 GB solid-state disk, with all the shock- and failure-resistant benefits of the MBA’s larger 64-GB option. Its most attractive feature, however, is its price tag; you can walk away with your own Eee PC for only $399.