I believe there's a bump out of sorts in the back center of the bottom that prevents the sides from touching the table. The connector for the power supply is also kind of on the bottom. The way it's curved, though, they're not quite on the bottom in the truest sense. At least, this is what I get from the pics I've seen. I haven't seen it in person.

I actually kind of like it. I'd buy it if I had $3k, it came with a 100+GB hard drive, and the keyboard was backlit.

I think the other reason that the iPod is so popular is that Apple provided an entire system around it - iTunes and the iTunes Music Store. The combination of syncing up your music on your computer and being able to legally download music off the internet along with the usability of the iPod is what differentiates Apple's mp3 players from everyone else's.

I will likely purchase a MBA for leisure travel. I currently own a G4 tower which I use as a file server and a 15" Macbook Pro, which serves as my main personal computer. (I have a Dell D420 for work) The size and weight of the MBA make it perfect for me as a travel computer - I take a lot of camera gear with me on vacation and the weight and size of the MBA does make a significant difference. The disadvantages others have cited don't apply to my situation. Even the lack of hard drive space isn't that big a deal since even my MacBook Pro doesn't have enough storage space for the pictures I take - I usually carry a few external drives anyway. The MBA will definitely fit within my "system".

I won't buy one right away since I rarely purchase the first iteration of any model of technology, and it doesn't hurt to wait since the price will likely drop.

It starts at $1799 and does have a backlit keyboard.

I don't agree, the mass market appeal isn't something that took Apple by surprise. It's also well known that when the iPod was introduced there were already plans for it to be much more than a music playing device, the plans for where it is today were in place, or at least in discussion, when the first 5gb model went into production.

I am seriously considering one for work as I do a large amount of travel plus I have n hour train ride each way to get to work each day so often am working on the train or watching TV shows - this would be perfect.

With the slightly faster processor it will retail in the US for A$3,000 ish (A$800 cheaper than in Oz) after an immediate tax deduction it will then only be about A$1,700 which is pretty reasonable to me.

It looks like it will do exactly what I need for work and travel - the only question for me being how one runs games on it given the lack of optical drive (yes I know you can buy an optical drive or use a virtual drive). It would be great if you create a disc image on an external HDD (I have a small 160GB LaCie drive I travel with already) and access that like an optical drive...

We currently have an iMac G5 and mrssimongr has an iBook so this would be a nice addition.

Can you explain what you mean by "access that like an optical drive"? Because generally accessing an optical drive is pretty undesirable. They are slow and in a portable they eat up your battery life. You can certainly create disc images on the HDD, but there's very little I can think of that you would want as disc images. You just want the contents. Just put the contents on the external drive. Done. If you mean DVD movies, it's a bit more involved and requires extra software to do the ripping but still easily doable. You can get a several movies onto the free space of the internal drive, even, and many more onto an external of that capacity.

I may be missing something, but a DVD movie is about the only thing I can think of that we might still routinely play directly from the optical disc. This can most certainly be solved. Much better to have a few movies on the internal drive or a couple dozen on the external than to have a stack of DVDs with you.

I am thinking of games that I generally install on the HDD but then require the CD/DVD to in the optical drive to run. Admittedly I have not explored how to avoid that previously - but that is the key circumstance when I would want to regularly be accessing an optical drive.

Ah. Well, that is something I am missing, then, because I don't play any games like that.

There should, however, be a way to avoid this. In the end, data is data. Seems like if the game comes on a DVD, perhaps they are doing this so that the game doesn't require a couple GB of disk space to install. If that's the only problem, it should be easily rectified by having a way to fully copy that game data onto a HDD. Even if the solution is to make a disk image file, it should be able to read from that just as easily as an optical disc. You should be able to make images of the CD/DVD yourself using Disk Utility.

If they are instead using this as some kind of copy protection, then you might be out of luck. But I think if you dig around online for info about this you would find some reasonable solutions.

When you first boot up MBA I assume it provides option to migrate data, etc. from another apple unit - absent the firewire, how is this now accomplished?

If so, I would assume USB 2. I thought USB 2 was of a comparable speed to that of firewire.

Not even close actually. USB 2 can burst to speeds that are about the same as what firewire sustains transfers at.

Okay, but I think USB 2 is still the answer to the question

It must be as thats the only port!

Hmm, the complicating factor here is that without a firewire connection, you can't put the laptop into Firewire Drive mode and treat it as just a firewire hard drive. Can you connect two Macs together via USB 2.0 and use that connection to transfer data? Otherwise, you would need a third device (i.e. external hard drive) to use the USB 2.0 to transfer data between the two.

Otherwise, you would connect via WiFi between the two Macs and just transfer that way.