11" Air for Skype and media centre?

[aussie.damo]

I'm living and working overseas at the moment and am looking for a small, portable Mac to use mainly for Skype and as a media centre of sorts. I left my 13" MBP at home as I am using my work-issue 13" Dell for my job. Didn't want to bring two machines over, but am missing the Mac experience.

When I saw the 11", I thought that could be the perfect companion laptop for me. It seems small and light enough that I won't feel like I'm doubling up, but will still give me my Mac fix. I don't intend it to do any heavy lifting and would really only use it for Skype and for playing iTunes content on the TV.

Has anyone had experience with the 11" in this way? I had a Rev A Air and it would stutter on Skype once it started to heat up. I never actually tried to plug it into a TV so don't know that either? Ideally, I'd like to spend as little as possible, so the entry level 11", perhaps with 128GB SSD, would be the most I'd want to get.

I don't have any 1080P content, so don't really care if that does or doesn't work. It's just iTunes downloads.

Also, does the Apple remote work with the new Air?

Thanks in advance...

Damo

 

[vm7118]

the 11" can play 1080p actually. even with the 1.4. you will likely have to use plex (the only software as of now that has hardware h.264 decoding) to have it work well.

but neither one has an IR receiver, so no go on the apple remote.

i'd recommend upgrading the RAM over upgrading the disk. neither the 64 nor the 128 will really be big enough to store any decent amount of media, so you will likely have an external drive of some sort anyway. the disk can be upgraded in the future, the RAM cannot.