Is there any reason to buy a Macbook Air?

[at0m]

But you can cut fruit with it!

[KarthXLR]

You can pretty much narrow every mac argument down to Price vs. Performance.

[Surf314]

You can pretty much narrow every mac argument down to Price vs. Performance.

That's true in a desktop, but with a laptop you are generally buying more than just the performance. One of the things that sold me was I saw an article saying that other manufacturers were having trouble designing a competitor to the air for the same price (not the components but the body and weight). I wouldn't necessarily try and sell anyone else an Air, but for what I wanted it for it ended up being perfect: The aluminum case feels sturdy so I'm not so afraid of breaking it, the weight is great to where I can throw an extra book in my backpack and still come out to the same weight as my old laptop (important for me since I've had back problems), the size is great in that it makes it convenient to use - it doesn't feel like a pain to pull out and put away constantly, the SSD makes it quick to boot and shutdown (about 20 seconds to boot and less than 5 to shutdown) which adds to the previous advantage, and it's beefier then a true netbook with a i5 processor and 4 gigs of RAM so I have no trouble running all the programs I want to use at the same time.

The advantages of design ended up being worth the premium (if there is any with the air) because I'm happier than I thought I would be with it. I don't think it has much to do with marketing selling me an image, I just find the product to be a joy to use. Most of the hassles I had experienced previously with laptops were reduced or eliminated by this design.