Got a new rev C this morning and I can see the lines but not as annoying as I didn't hope it would be and here's my first impression on the machine generally. (Don't think starting yet another thread would've been nice, so just adding to a random popular thread...) I'm (was) a rev A SSD user. And this is my 3rd MBA from rev A HDD being the first. So, for those that skipped rev B might find it somewhat imformative.
Lines are probably just as faint as I saw at Tokyo Apple Store last weekend. Not as visible on white background but more so on light colored backgrounds of grey/brown, and no, it doesn't take my attention.
The speed is ok. But it's quite subtle to be honest, you can feel "Oh, it's prolly a tad bit faster" but that's about it from rev A SSD. I'm sure big difference exists from HDD version just like I felt from rev A HDD to SSD, and obviously lack of any disk activity sound is great.
Then, the thermal problem making the kernel process stutter from rev A is probably simply gone, which is really nice. I watched some 5min of HD movies on it and no stutter (no coolbook installed), no kernel_task going berserk. I even opened the case and re applied the thermal paste but I don't think the temperature made any change (even if it did, just a few c, so I doubt it's worth doing if you're concerned.) On calm moments, the CPU temperature is at 50c (room temp is 20c+), when watching HD vid, it goes up to 80 (istats reports 90 but coolbook says 80 when installed), but obviously not the horrendous 100c (and shuts itself down sooner or later) like rev A did...
Fan noise seems to be more "polite" than rev A which just was lousy noise when it hits 6.2k. Just my opinion but fan noise seems steadier.
Keyboard, which I wasn't aware and some of you probably aren't is that the Ctrl button is now put back to where Windows machine would have at left down next to fn (since rev B?) and Caps Lock is on the middle of the left row. For me, as a programmer, this is a bit of a let down... as rev A had Ctrl on the middle left, which was nice.
I've tested a bit of 3D performance and installed Eve Online on mac (space mmorpg 3D game) and flew a newby ship around and it showed about 20 or so FPS on medium settings (couldn't get any better FPS on lower settings), which was quite fine when not in condensed zone, but I guess things can go slow in busy moments. (Gonna test some FPS games [CoD4, HL2 and some such] on Windows once I make this triple boot later)
Disk space is doubled, which is great, especially when you want multiple OS with at least 5GB for each instances.
I looked at the display connections but was too complicated for me to even try swapping rev A display onto it on my first go... (it had some star shaped screw, which I couldn't unscrew as well) perhaps when someone can help me with the process I might try later.
To be honest, if you're satisfied with rev A SSD, there isn't hell of a big reason for a change, when including the risk of getting crappier display and CoolBook being the savior for rev A's critical problem. (For perhaps 1k expense, by selling rev A at 1k, getting rev C at 2k) The line problem in rev C, while it's still visible, if you already know about it (no wonder Apple won't fix as people usually don't notice this [and interestingly enough, if I focus on actual use of the computer, I even forget about lines], unless told so, but that doesn't mean this obvious problem should be left over multiple iterations... for sake.)
I'll report any other things if I think it's worth it as I use (and possibly how it fairs on WinXP and Linux real booting). Right now, I think I'm going to keep this rev C as lines aren't killing me at all.
