MacBook Air - Genius in Aluminium

What can I say about the MacBook Air? We have one of the late 2010 models, 13" screen, OS X Lion, 128Gb SSD, 2Gb RAM. It serves as our day-to-day computing device when we need to do something that can't easily be done on an iPad (this is a fairly short list of tasks but that's a story for another day). Mostly we use it in the living room, sitting on the sofa, watching the TV.
The most striking thing about the MacBook Air is its appearance. It isn't the thinnest or the  lightest laptop around but it has the cleanest lines and the biggest trackpad of any I have seen. Here are the things I like most about the MBA:

• Case - there's no argument, it is simply the most beautifully engineered laptop available.  The finish is just superb.
• Battery life - 7 hours is plenty for my purposes (it's not a work machine so my periods of use are normally only a few hours long) but more importantly it holds charge on standby for ages so it's always ready to go whenever I need to use it.
• MagSafe power adapter - when I do have to tether the MBA to the wall the MagSafe power adapter is absolutely the best in the business. It is easy to connect or disconnect, won't pull the laptop onto the floor if you trip over the cable and has discreet LEDs to tell you that it's working. The cable is also long enough to be useful and thin enough to be easily coiled and packed.
• OS X Lion - it has a few quirks but it does many things so well that you really notice the difference if you're a long-term Windows user. First, it doesn't restart very often and when it does the desktop is restored exactly as you left it when you stopped working. Doesn't sound like much but it saves so much time, especially when contrasted with Windows' habit of closing everything and restarting overnight. Second, full-screen applications and multiple desktops are fantastic productivity enhancements, especially if you don’t have an external monitor. 
• Mac App Store - it sounds like a gimmick but, like the iOS App Store, it's actually fantastically useful. Software is easy to find, install and update and, because all charges go to your Apple account, payment is a breeze.
• Mouse pad and gestures - I was a little worried that the gestures would be tiresome or that the lack of mouse buttons would be a problem. In fact, the gestures work so well that I miss them when using a Windows machine and the pad’s features render buttons completely unnecessary.

The only part of the package that is even slightly annoying is the keyboard, which is not laid out in the standard UK pattern (the apostrophe and ampersand are reversed) and lacks a hash key. That aside (and it’s a very minor flaw) the MBA is undoubtedly the best laptop I’ve every used and is highly recommended.