Cupertino (CA) - Apple quietly cut a big chunk of the price of the 64 GB SSD-equipped Macbook Air - the price dropped by 16 percent from about $3098 to $2598. The price of the Macbook Air with 80 GB hard drive remained at $1799.

The SSD Macbook Air is still expensive, but can now almost be considered to be a good deal when compared to other SSD notebooks currently on the market. While you can order a entry-level notebook with a 64 GB SSD from Dell for as little as $1600, compact and more stylish systems carry a hefty premium, but are getting much more interesting for a larger number of consumers.

The price drop of the Macbook Air puts the notebook squarely against Lenovo’s Thinkpad X300, whose price was recently dropped by about $650 and is offered in a comparable configuration for about