I have a dilemma. I am proud of my new Macbook Air 13\", and I want to show it to friends, but will they treat it with the same obsessive care that I do? NO!!! Showed it to my wife's fried last week who clattered it with the rings on her fingers. Stifling the urge to cringe and a gasp, I wisked it away from her and slipped it streight back into its snug gel cover, and hid it in my sock drawer. (Hoping burglers won't rummmage in my socks). Another friend has a habbit of prodding and stabbing at the screen on a laptop - so its staying well away from him! This thing is so well engineered, light, and a joy to use. It will hopefully contribute to me not getting back troubles in later life. It is completely silent - no hard drives or fans whizzing round. I like the back-lit keyboard, which is great for surfing in the dark in bed. Battery lasts about 6 hours. Bought an dapter off ebay to connect to a big telly through the HDMI port - which works a treat. Handy for viewing photos and videos. Bought it from ebay for £890. Brand new sealed UK version. As for value for money. Compared to the other ultrabooks out there, its about the same price or less.

Ok - lets get the negatives out the way. The price for the MBA (i got the 13 inch version) is, shall we say, a tad on the steep side.

But my god, its quite simply the best laptop on the market for business travel. Its power, memory, battery and above all weight and design are amazing. As with anything Apple its almost impossible to buy it at a discounted rate but if you can afford it i cannot recommend it more.

I use it in particular for business - but the personal media capability is also outstanding.

Save up if you like gadgets. Its just about worth the money!

Travelled extensively with an iPad but thought it a little restrictive so decided to buy an 11" MBA with 128 gb.
Fabulous device, ultra portable and weighs about 1 kg.
Bought a protective case immediately as it is a little delicate. There are a couple of tiny chips on the leading edge of the lid already and I have been very careful with it. Being that it is so light, you don't quite feel that it's secure when balanced on your leg or in your lap!
I do regret having not bought the 13" model though. With the 11", you don't get a full screen on a standard window which you do get with the larger model. This apart, I am happy with this rather luxurious laptop.

The new Macbook Air 11 inch - the best laptop ever? I think so...

Ok, upfront disclaimer - I am well know for being a bit of an Apple fan and I've used a Mac for a while. I am however quick to critise Apple when they get it wrong and I certainly expect an amazing product for my hard earned £1000!

I saw the Macbook Air announcement and thought 'looks good but it's a little underpowered, low in memory and very expensive for a netbook.' But then I saw the little beauty in the flesh and a week later I was a proud owner.

The Pros:
It looks and feels incredible. Very very slim but still packs a full size keyboard and large trackpad. It's very light and really solidly built too. The ideal portable computer and way more useful than an iPad.

The battery life is very good - I've consistently achieved nearly 4 to 5 hours of usage. Only watching videos or Skype killed the battery any quicker.

All the practical stuff is fine. The Wifi works well and it doesn't get as hot as other Macs when in use. The only limitation down to size is having only two USB ports.

It's surprisingly fast - having only a tiddly 1.4GHz processor was almost a deal breaker but I honestly can't notice any difference between the performance of this and my 2.4 GHz 15 inch 2 year old Macbook Pro! Apparently it's down to the solid state memory being much quicker for data access than a standard hard disk.

The 11 inch screen was a concern before purchase but it doesn't feel much smaller than a 13 inch screen in practice. I spent a long time testing this out in the Apple store! The width is very close to that of a 13 inch screen so the size is shaved off the height to keep the display usable. The screen is also very bright and high resolution.

And of course.. it's Mac so it's amazingly easy to use, practically bug free and is packed full of great applications such as iPhoto and iMovie.

The Cons:
The memory is very limited. I paid extra for 128GB of storage and still can't fit all my music and images on there. You really can't rely on this as your only computer unless you're happy to permanently store lots of stuff externally or in 'the cloud'. That said if you mainly use Spotify and or have a separate desktop computer then this isn't an issue for you.

Much as I haven't noticed any performance issues yet I don't imagine it will be powerful enough to make videos or do lots of design work due to the small processor and hard disk. This is where the lots GHz

The price - £850 (£1000 for the 128GB version I bought) is a huge layout for a laptop that will most likely be your second computer. Not for the faint hearted!

Why buy a Macbook Air?
If you love your gadgets, use a Mac and want an ultra portable but high performance laptop to complement your main iMac/Macbook the Macbook Air is absolutely perfect. You may even get away with this as your lone laptop if you don't need much data or you store all your photos and music on a hard drive.

Verdict
I love it!