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Should you sell your MacBook Air now?

In his latest installment of Fully Equipped, David Carnoy talks about whether, with the arrival of new notebook products from Apple, you should sell your first-generation MacBook Air before it drops too much in value.

David Carnoy Executive Editor / Reviews
Executive Editor David Carnoy has been a leading member of CNET's Reviews team since 2000. He covers the gamut of gadgets and is a notable reviewer of mobile accessories and portable audio products, including headphones and speakers. He's also an e-reader and e-publishing expert as well as the author of the novels Knife Music, The Big Exit and Lucidity. All the titles are available as Kindle, iBooks, Nook e-books and audiobooks.
Expertise Mobile accessories and portable audio, including headphones, earbuds and speakers Credentials
  • Maggie Award for Best Regularly Featured Web Column/Consumer
David Carnoy
2 min read

Think wishful: Concept dream designs of the mysterious Apple Brick have surfaced on blogs. Yves Behar/OLPC

By now you've probably heard the rumors that Apple is having an event on October 14th, where Steve Jobs will introduce new Apple laptops to the world. At this point, it's unclear whether the lines will be refreshed with new processors and configurations or whether we'll see a more substantial redesign to the Macbook and Macbook Pro. And then there's the big secondary question of what's going on with the MacBook Air?

Chances are, if there's an update to the Air, we'll just see a bump in processor speed and storage capacity, particularly in the solid-state version of the Air. But, then there's this mysterious thing called the Brick that started with a site called 9to5Mac and made a few orbits around the blogsphere. Some say it might be a tablet. Others think it's a new version of Apple TV. And many are conjecturing that it's a low-cost, lightweight Netbook to match up against all the mini notebooks hitting the marketing--including models from Dell, HP, Asus.

If, indeed, we're about to be introduced to a MacBook Mini or an Apple Netbook (or, maybe Jobs does go counter-intuitive and calls this lightweight machine the Brick), isn't it time to ditch the first-gen Air while it still has some value? I figure the one-two punch of a refreshed Air with a new budget-price Apple notebook will knock $300-$500 off a used Air's current selling price.

Or, with two weeks to go before the press event, is it already too late? Is the Air already utterly devalued? Let me know what you think.