To me (no offense) but that wasnt much of a review. I've actually bought the 1.6/80gb model and used it for a full week before returning it.
The machine has no problems, just that the fan noise was loud compared to the mb,mbp and heat at the bottom back was the same as the 2.4ghz mbp just before it became too hot to touch and was annoying. I dont think there was anything wrong with the fan itself or the heat of the mba but its so easy to get it to rev up to the maximum output.
I noticed that the exhaust of the mba is not good at the bottom back of the machine where it could get blocked easily. The mb and mbp has it on the top back part, which is a much better area.
As for programs and such it wasnt so bad opening safari and minor programs but if you do alot of multitasking on the mba with the 4200rpm hdd, I will warn you guys that the bottleneck will be seen very easily. The machine will come to a crawl. Then the fans will start to rev up with its high pitched bvrrrrrrrrmmmm noise (kind of like the mb's fan at its highest just higher pitched and a bit stronger). For example the mbp when its being taxed to its maximum the fan revs up and still has a shhhhhhooosshh kind of noise with a hint of a buzz noise but nope not on the mba no shhooosh but a rather bvvvrrrmmmmm noise that sounds like a mini vacuum and is the center of your attention if your in a quiet room or library by yourself.
I wouldnt mind the fan noise if it came on rarely like that, but its sooo easy to push the mba to its limit. I mean opening microsoft word (ub version) and ichat + safari with 4+ tabs and even if you only load 1 page from safari and if that page has a youtube video on (not even high def or on fullscreen) the fan will start to rev up to its highest. And on top of that once the fan gets going, you have to wait like 15 minutes after closing whatever app that causes it to tax the mba for the fan to finally die down.
I honestly believe that there is nothing wrong with the mba that I had and that its just working as it should. But I'm very picky about fan noise as you can see. I've compared all 3 mba,mb,mbp and to me the mb and mbp was hard to push to its limit and the fan came down fast from closing whatever that taxed the mb and mbp but the mba is pushed even in light use to its limit.
I have to watch out of what programs and what kinds of webpages to avoid for the fan to start revving up and that is a pain to have in the back of your mind. But with the mb and mbp its like whatever I threw at it it handled without the noise.
It could be a different story with the ssd model of the mba. It could have been the bottlenecking from the 4200rpm 1.8" hdd. Just think about it, have you ever used a 4200rpm 2.5" hdd? I have and its slow as hell, now just think about it in a 1.8" form factor and not to mention the 1.8" 4200rpm drive uses low voltage. The platter and head has to be tiny. Also the ssd drive, even if it is in 1.8" form it still out performs my 10k raptor drive on my mac pro.
I am still interested in the mba and since I just bought a 2.8ghz 8 core mac pro with 16gb of RAM I'm thinking about selling my sr mbp and opting for the 1.8/ssd model.
Also I recently bought a samsung 64gb ssd (the newer models) from ebay and put it in my 2.4ghz sr mbp and it was a joy to use. Imagine all the apps lauching simultaneously without affecting each app in speed and no need for cache because it will retrieve the app or files instantly. But I did sell the samsung because there was a sleep issue where it froze my mbp and had to reboot to work. So I want to look into the mba for ssd because I absolutely loved it.
