Fancy a MacBook Air clone, running ICS, and costing $200? Read on!

At Computex, there was one little surprise from a company called Thread Technology demoing what looks like a Macbook Air clone, but one that will cost only $200 at retail, so around 5x less than the low-end version of an actual Macbook Air. Moreover, if you buy 500 or more units, you can get it for $150 per unit, which I imagine is an option only for companies buying them in bulk.

The Android Book, aka THD N2-A, is an Android 4.0 notebook that comes with a 1.2 Ghz Cortex A8 processor and has a 13.3″ display with a 1366×768 resolution. It’s not a touchscreen, as it’s only intended to be used as a laptop. That also means that you can use the touchpad for navigation, but it’s recommended that you use a mouse, as the touchpad is far from what you would get from an actual Air.

The default storage is 8GB SSD, but it also comes with options for 16, 32, or 64 GB of SSD storage, which will obviously increase the price further. It has 2 USB 2.0 ports, audio jack, mini-HDMI port, full size card reader, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, and also a 3G connection, which is useful if you intend to carry it around a lot.

There is also a Windows 8 version of this machine, that comes with a dual core Atom processor, but the battery only lasts for 3 hours, compared to the Android 4.0 version, running an ARM CPU, that lasts for 8 hours, so almost three times as much. This is the reason why I still think Atom will not be competitive with ARM anytime soon, if ever.

Our Darcy LaCouvee is on the ground at Computex, and we hope he will provide us with some hands-on video and witty commentary soon. We’ll update this post when that happens. Meanwhile, take a look at this short video showcasing the notebook, courtesy of Netbook News.

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