Apple launched its latest much-awaited notebook at Macworld this week but the price and unusual feature set mean the system is likely to be a hard sell, even in businesses where the firm has recently shown signs of a renaissance.

The MacBook Air packs a great deal of innovation but is expensive and will need to convince sceptical IT departments about price and service terms.

The device is very thin at just 0.75in and tapers down to 0.16in. It weighs just 3lb but, with a 13.3in screen, it is not the subnotebook that many had forecast.

With a abasic price of £1,199, cost is likely to be prohibitive for many. Adding a 64GB Flash drive instead of standard 80GB hard drive and a 1.8GHz rather than basic 1.6GHz Core Duo processor will add a whopping £829.

On the plus side, the MacBook Air includes a trackpad with iPhone-like multitouch capability so that users can pinch together images or expand them. Ports are hidden to add to the elegance of the design.

However, Apple has sacrificed significant features to enable the striking form factor. There is no wired Ethernet or cellular capability, the optical drive is external, only one USB port is offered and the keyboard-based speaker offers only mono audio.

IT might also carp at the return-to-factory replacement policy for RAM, hard drive and battery.