Reply #10: For the uses you describe, I'd guess the main thing that matters to you is screen size

[struggle4progress]

With the air, you're paying for flash memory, and I'm not convinced it's a good investment, unless you're likely to gimp your hard drive by rough handling of your notebook

I like OSX and I own several macs. But apple continues to irritate me with its attitude towards connectors and user-upgrade. "Thunderbolt" means mostly: "you want to connect to your existing hardware, then buy an adaptor from us." Shortly after I got my white macbook, for which a user can easily upgrade ram and harddrive, apple began making user upgrades harder. It looks to me like user-upgrade is more or less impossible for the macbook air or pro. And the more I learn, the more overpriced mac looks to me

If I were determined to buy another mac notebook, I'd probably go with the lowend macbook pro at $1200. But I'd really think twice about it: I could get a macmini with 4GB ram for $700, a generic 22" flatscreen for another $100, and adding a keyboard, mouse, and the %2#$! apple vga adapter for another $100 would only take me to $900; then I could probably buy a non-mac 15" 3ghz laptop with 4gb ram for <$400 and put linux on it -- then I'd have a decent work machine with a nice screen plus a decent sized laptop for about $1300. Hell, for $1200 I could build myself a perfectly decent work machine with a 22" screen, plus buy myself a non-mac 15" 3ghz laptop with 4gb ram for working on the back deck, plus get a little $250 netbook to keep under my front car seat for webbrowsing when I ate out alone