A Macforums member bought an "as-is" Macbook Air from Ebay and the unit ended up being an early Air prototype. The computer bears a mark indicating it was built in May 2007, six months before the line was introduced.

There are a few changes from the final design: The microphone positioning is a bit off, the keyboard has no lighting, and it runs an interim build of OS X 10.5. The bottom, as shown in the photo above, is black-colored aluminum. Apple has offered no word as to how the prototype unit escaped their clutches.

MacMall is selling the previous-gen MacBook Air for $1150 after a $100 mail-in rebate. The unit will ship for free. To make the deal even sweeter, the retailer will throw in Parallels for free as well. The deal is for brand new laptops, and not refurbished units. Head on over to MacMall to check it out.

The new MacBook Air has been released, with some definitive upgrades from the original. Apple has replaced the awkward microDVI plug with the new mini DisplayPort plug. Under the hood, the unit features integrated graphics (NVIDIA 9400M) and booting has been said to take a paltry twenty-five seconds. The new MacBook Air also features a 128GB SSD. The unit is out now and costs approximately $1,799.

Apple just announced the .16-inch thin MacBook Air — a laptop so thin it fits in a manila envelope. The new machine features a full-size keyboard and LED-backlit 13.3-inch display with built-in iSight, and the new larger trackpad supports multi-touch gestures. Just like the iPhone, you’ll be able to pan around, pinch to zoom, and rotate with two fingers, and move windows with a flick. Apple got the size down by using the same 1.8-inch 80GB drive that’s in the iPod classic, but you’ll be able to order a 64GB SSD as an option. The Air eschews optical media, but there’s a separate external you can snag for $99 and Apple’s also announced a feature called Remote Disk that’ll let the Air get data off the optical drive in any PC or Mac running the Remote Disk software. Pricing starts at $1799, and the Air will be shipping in two weeks.

Cyber detectives have been busy today, scouring the Web for information on the MacBook Air. Here is what we know…

"Byrd" hunted for the term "macbookair" on Dogpile and found a Google ad listing up top, which redirects to the MacBook page of the Apple Store.

Next, "mango" tracked down the macbookair.org domain name and found that it is listed under Apple!.