Computerworld’s Michael DeAgonia isn’t the first tech pundit to compare the new MacBook Air to the ill-fated Cube — small, stylish and expensive. Though unlike others, who assert that the Air is like the Cube and is therefore doomed, DeAgonia takes pains to say that the comparison isn’t necessarily apt.

Me, I think the Cube comparison is wrong: paying a premium for a laptop that sacrifices performance and cost for size is not the same as paying a premium for a desktop that sacrifices performance and cost for style. A better comparison might be the iPod mini: at the time, people couldn’t understand why people wouldn’t pay $50 more to get three or four times the storage; yet, despite the high cost per megabyte, the mini (and its successor, the nano) became the best-selling iPod model by far. Small matters when you’re dealing with something portable.

Willing to sacrifice cost and performance for size? MacBook Air. Size and cost for performance? MacBook Pro. Size and performance for cost? MacBook. Cluster headaches? Laptop running Vista.