Well, I have a few problems, but then again these are my personal gripes. Others may not have a problem with the first three. I've been using my MBA 13 i7/8gb/256gb for a week now.
1. Display: I'm not used to the retina display, so I'm not missing that. That being said, the screen is somehow too soft/blurry for me. Maybe it's just that my age is showing and my eyes are not in top notch condition anymore, but writing and reading on MBA for long periods of time is clearly straining my eyes, unlike i.e. my Asus laptop running Ubuntu. I have the LG panel, and have calibrated the screen, didn't really help. Also the ever changing viewing angles are frustrating. Turn your head a bit, and you have to adjust the screen (or the laptop) especially when working on a dark background (I prefer to do my coding and other writing on black/dark background to reduce the eyestrain).
2. Battery life: I don't think I have a faulty unit or anything, but the battery life was bit of a let down. Yes, I get the promised 9 - 12 hours of battery life, but only if I don't do anything else but use lightweight text editors and surf with Safari on pages that don't have flash. Anything more taxing will start draining the battery pretty fast. Again, I get that this machine is meant mainly for light work on the go, but after all the hype it's still a tad underwhelming to get 3 - 5 hours of battery life while i.e. coding (Java + iOS). Don't get me wrong, it's still a decent amount of time, but yes, I expected more. Then again, given how much eyestrain I get from working on code/text on this machine for a long periods of time, then maybe it's a good thing the battery dies before my eyes do.
3. Heat: In this department I do wonder if I did get a faulty unit. When I got this machine I installed a few programs, heaviest being Xcode. I had my machine plugged in when installing/extracting programs, and when I installed Xcode the area near the hinge was almost too hot to touch. The same thing happens when playing games or compiling Java/iOS code. As for games Civ V runs surprisingly well (at least on my standards) on this machine, but it will generate a huge amount of heat on the upper left corner of the keyboard and the hinge area. It's almost scary. So, when the MBA is not under heavy stress it's cool as a cucumber, but introduce more stress and you have to mind your fingers.
4. Thunderbolt port/connecting an external monitor: I have two years old HP monitor, native resolution is 1920 * 1200. I can't get the monitor to work with the MBA. The first time I connected it the monitor showed the desktop briefly but then went black, and after that connecting it to the MBA has done nothing. The monitor don't seem to be receiving a signal from the MBA as it always shows all ports as inactive when connected to the MBA, so I'm wondering if the Thunderbolt port fried the first time I tried to connect it. I've tried connecting it using the Thunderbolt - DVI adapter and Thunderbolt - display port adapter, no dice (the monitor doesn't have an HDMI port). With Win 7 and linux the monitor works just fine.
So yeah. I have mixed feelings about this laptop, and I am considering returning it. I may have a faulty unit (at least the Thunderbolt port seems to be dead), but I'm not sure if I'm willing to try another MBA because of the other issues (mainly the display). Then again, the form factor and weight are a big plus, and the battery life and the overall performance are decent enough while doing more demanding stuff. So I'm still undecided.
