Apple has formally announced the redesigned MacBook Air at its special press conference today. The company has confirmed the new "brick" construction, with a case milled from a solid aluminum block, instead of a combination of aluminum and plastic pieces. The processors come from Intel's "Montevina" generation and are offered in 1.6GHz or 1.86GHz variants. Like the new MacBook and MacBook Pro models, they also carry NVIDIA's new GeForce 9400M mainboard and graphics chipset and are said to perform 5X faster in video tasks than the GMA X3100 video in the previous model.

An LED-backlit display and five hours of battery life are still claimed for the new system.

The notebooks will ship with 2GB RAM, and have the option for a 120GB disk drive or 128GB solid state drive. The pricing on the new MacBook Air will be $1,800 for a version with the 1.6GHz CPU and 120GB disk drive, while $2,500 nets a 1.86GHz CPU and 128GB solid-state drive. Apple is shipping the notebooks in November but is taking pre-orders today through the online Apple Store.