I really want it all to squeeze onto 64GB

[JimmyPop]

FWIW, I'm an academic as well (university professor) and I've been using a Rev A MBA since they came out, originally had an 80GB HDD then switched to a 64GB Runcore. I currently have 26GB free.

I use my MBA for work and giving lectures and it has been perfectly fine. I make a concerted effort to not store superfluous files on it (e.g. work only) and haven't run into any problems with space. I make good use of networked and cloud storage (dropbox) as well.

While YMMV, it is possible to live within the 64GB with a little forethought.

This is pretty much what I wanted to hear. Mine will mostly be used for academic/clinical work - essential applications will be Office or iWorks, probably iPhoto, an RSS reader and Papers (excellent application for storing research articles - like iTunes for PDFs!).

I'm pretty much sold on the 64GB now. Hopefully will return with one later today!

 

[ewhite]

To share on my current MacBook Pro setup:

I have a 320GB 7200RPM drive on my BTO MacBook Pro (late 2008 unibody) running Windows 7 Pro in bootcamp. I store nearly everything on an external NAS server.

Using 20GB in BootCamp (7, with a few programs) and around the same in Mac OS. So I'm nowhere near using 64GB on my main laptop, and running a similar config on an Air would net the same results if not even less.

For basic needs, 64GB is a LOT of space. You can always re-install Mac OSX w/o printer drivers, extra languages, and reclaim space from day 1. Not at all hard to do and quick gains as a result.