Apple MacBook Air 13.3" Laptop - MC966B/A (July,2011) (Latest Model)

Lightning fast with SSD. Portable and light. Excellent quality product. Backlit keyboard is excellent. Only thing missing is a kensington lock slot.

The Macbook Air is gorgeous. Light & lightening fast, it is superb computing on the move. Yes its expensive but it is lovely.

However!!! OS Lion is a bit flaky. Apple appears to be resolutely ignoring the issues and it is only after experiencing them that I found out many other people are too. 'Preview' is a program that I used a lot. "Used" because it is so unusable that I need to find something else. It crashes every time I use it and I suspect it was the cause of a major crash, resulting in Lion needing to be rebuilt. This was done at the Apple shop in Birmingham, as I was traveling and completely stuck without it (thanks guys!) Apparently there is another piece of software that is buggy but I haven't experienced that error.

Despite this frustration and the silence from Apple regarding it, it is a fantastic piece of kit. It drops easily in to my camera bag and adds little weight. The battery life 'in the real world' eg wifi on while picture editing etc, is nowhere near the claimed maximums but it is still pretty good and beats any other laptop that I've used.

If you travel a lot, then the Air is fantastic. If you want your computer to look and feel excellent too, then get an Air. If you can afford to pay the extra, then the Air is well worth it. Value for money depends upon the value you put on it, it could be one star or five purely on your attitude, hence my three. If it hadn't needed the OS rebuild & Preview actually worked, I'd probably have rated it higher. This was replacement for a more than five year old Macbook which had served me very well. If this machine works as well and for as long as my Macbook did, then 'value for money' will easily be five stars. My wife has just gone on to her third PC laptop in that time, so cheaper can be a false economy.