We expect the price points to remain fairly steady, with an entry-level version at 2.1GHz (T8100) and high-end at 2.4GHz (T8300).

Both CPUs will sport 3MB of shared L2 cache — which may seem like a downgrade from the 4MB L2 cache on existing Macbook Air models, but the cache will be faster, smarter (better/more efficient dynamic allocation between the cores, for one thing) and should actually perform at least as well as the existing design while helping to make the much-faster clocked Penryn chips work within the Air’s thermal envelope.

As we said from the beginning, the Macbook Air was designed around the Penryn…..and it will truly come into its own when these chips ship, even though we don’t necessarily recommend that readers play the waiting game.

You don’t buy an Air for the most competitive specs on paper anyway.

You buy it because it’s just the right size, thickness, weight and downright sexiness for what you want from a laptop.

You probably already have a desktop that is where you focus on specs and benchmarks — a laptop should be portable and virtually nothing is as portable as the Air without making even more dramatic sacrifices on features.

Read on for more….