ASUS’ UM30 Laptop Looks A Bit Familiar [ASUS New Thin Laptop Looks Like MacBook Air, 13" screen]

ASUS’ new ultra-thin notebook,the UM30, is set to be released in Japan soon and it has a very striking resemblance to the MacBook Air from Apple. The UM30 is also pretty thin and light, coming in at only 19.6 mm thick and a light weight of 1.4 kg.

In addition to the lightweight, the UM30 sports an Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 (no clock speed reported by ASUS – Intel’s default speed for that chip is 2.5GHz), a 13″ display, 3GB of DDR2 RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and comes with Windows 7. Not bad for a ultra-thin computer.

Comparing it to its doppelgänger, the MacBook Air, the Core 2 Duo on the air is clocked slower at 1.86GHz, has less memory of a faster type at 2GB DDR3, and has a smaller default hard drive. For what its worth, the MacBook Air comes with Mac OS X and the famed Mac user experience.

The UM30 will hit Japan tomorrow for the price of 100,000 yen (roughly $1,105), which is about $400 cheaper than the MacBook Air, as well. With a similar design and a slightly faster processor, the MacBook Air might have found a challenger in the ultra-thin race.