Refurbed air or....

I have a brand new Macbook Pro (non-retina, but with the high def screen) and have relegated my 2 year old MBP (15 incher) to bringing along to work with me for non-work things, such as internet searches, or reference books.

It's a bit large and obvious on the desk, plus it is a little heavier than I'd like (though far from being like my 17 inch HP.) I am toying with the idea of a refurb Air from the Apple Store to use instead. One of the basic ones- no more than 850 list. There are some of the later Core2 machines, and some basic I5 ones as well with 4GB RAM that fit the price.

For LIGHT surfing (no gaming) and the rare light use of a Windows VM, would these machines still be viable? I am not positive yet I'll invest in one, but am just curious. The MBP I have (2.53Ghz I5, 500 gig HD, 8 GB RAM and the standard glossy) is like new, and it is doing okay, but I'm thinking of a smaller one for convenience.

Any ideas are welcome. I've got a number of options at home already- a couple of Netbooks, I have an iPad I bring that has a bluetooth keyboard, and some older Windows laptops as well. So far, the MBP if my favorite. but it IS a bit large.

I'm not a young guy anymore (late 50s) and diabetic so my eyesight may be fine one time, and wonky the next.

At my previous job, we had the 13 inch Airs with the I7 and it handled the VMs very well, since the SSD made swapping much, much faster.

I may stop by a Best Buy or Frys to look at the 11" and see how hard it is to read.

And that is what I got- 13 inch, 1.7Ghz I5 refurb with 128 gig SSD since I won't need a lot of stuff on the machine. I'll keep it lean.

Thanks for giving me input.