Take a MacBook Pro case, drop in an Intel Atom processor instead of the Intel i7, install your own port of Android as the OS (but put a Windows key on the keyboard to be on the safe side) and sell the whole thing for $450. While you're at it, knock out an iMac for the same price, and start advertising a cut-price iPad, coming soon. Then, all you have to do is call them a Q Pro, Q DT and Q Pad, so as to make it very clear that they aren't in any way copies of Apple computers, and you have the finest range of fakes currently coming out of China. So good are they, that they attracted the attention of Engadget, which in turn attracted the attention of bloggers everywhere and even got some video blog time on YouTube.

The likeness to Apple gear, of course, is not coincidental and the MacBook Pro, sorry, the Q Pro, also retains Apple's unibody construction. The big difference, other than the price, is that this is not anywhere nearly as powerful, so you would need to judge it alongside a netbook with a similar specification.

These are, strictly speaking, not fakes, and I gather that Apple doesn't have the strict control over its patent designs in China, as it does in the west. So they should be legal to sell here. Whether they will look as good in the hand as they do in the promotion, remains to be seen. As does the likelihood of any kind of decent customer service or guarantees.

The site itself is amusing rather than helpful, since it's not clear where to buy these and the specs and prices are also absent and need to be hunted around the web for. The attempt to translate into English is the best part.

I posted this mainly because it's not often that a Chinese site attracts mainstream attention, and because I though it worth showing you just how impressive some of these Chinese fakes, sorry, imitations, are becoming. I'm sure it's no coincidence that the genuine articles are also made in China, giving the manufacturers there ready access to the original designs and specifications. These could even be made in the same factory that produces the Apple equipment, although even if they are, you would expect the quality control, and the quality of materials, to be much lower.

The worrying thing, at least in my opinion, is that people in the west are starting to ask around about the quality and performance of these, and where they might be purchased in the west. If it does prove to be legal to import these, they could be one of the first Chinese products to challenge the brand names successfully, even though their appeal is entirely based on features 'borrowed' from another manufacturer.