Choosing a Macbook Air or New Macbook Pro

I purchased a new Macbook Air 13.3", 128GB SSD, 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB released in October 2010 and love it.

The Macbook Air is a great machine and a great screen.  The resolution is higher than the MBP.  The Air is 1440x900 and the Macbook Pro 13.3" is 1280x800.  General text on the screen is smaller so for example I increased the font size in Mail.  Other than that I love the machine and value more screen real estate.  It boots in 14 seconds and 7 of those seconds are probably hardware checks. Something that would take 7 seconds to compile on my 2007 2.13Ghz 15" Macbook Pro takes 1.5 seconds on a machine with a slower processor.  If you get the MBP you should take the storage hit and get the SSD. The performance is well worth it.

I got my Air 2 weeks before the new Macbook Pros with Thunderbolt came out. I was going to return the Macbook Air if the 13.3" MBPs had SSDs by default and 1440x900 resolution like the Macbook Air. This would be a great machine for me in conjunction with the excellent Intel Core i5 because it had a much better processor and Thunderbolt. They didn't. SSD was something I could add to the MBP but the screen resolution was not going to change. So for me I chose the Air for ~20% more screen real estate, about a $150 cheaper (no SSD extra charge) and lighter weight. So for someone that is not so hung up on the resolution I would get the MBP with a SSD upgrade. The processor is much better, you get Thunderbolt, better battery, etc. and having SSD is WELL worth less disk space for me.