You really sound like an Apple apologist. Yes, the MBA has some nice extras as well–but as Desmond was pointing out it isn’t as clear cut as many are depositing.

In regards to core performance there is no real competition here. The Toshiba is slightly faster as well as having more than 4 times (!) as much storage space on a faster HDD. Paying a 50% premium for the Mac with lower specs is disconcerting.

As for footprint, I would call it a draw. The Toshiba is narrower, the MBA thinner and lighter. But this isn’t apples-to-apples at all because the MBA rips out an essential part of the system–the DVD Writer/Reader!

You attempt to hype the floppy disk example as a nod to Apple’s genius, but the reality is that the two are not congruent. Floppy drives at the time were being displaced by CD and DVD drives and to make a consession for size it became impractical to have both in a system (or bother with the additional cost of swappable drives). The problem with the floppy example (which was displaced by USB Flash and CD/DVD media) is that CD/DVD is an integral part of todays computing–much more so than floppy drives were. Not only are optical media used to load application and backup content they are also used for media (movies, music) as well as authoring. Further, there has appeared no ubiquitous standard to displace the functionality of an optical drive.

Sacrificing an essential component to the core design for a reduction in thickness and weight (especially if the weight is still present in carrying around the external drive!) is a poor trade off for many (but not all) users.

The MBA has some nice perks and is a quality design but for a user looking for performance and portability at the best price the Toshiba indeed has a number of advantaged. In many cases these advantages impact the core experience in a significant manner and should not be diminished, especially at the price disparity.