Yes. It's the same with every portable device: Customers complain if the thing weighs too much, they complain if the thing runs too slowly, and they complain if

Yes. It's the same with every portable device: Customers complain if the thing weighs too much, they complain if the thing runs too slowly, and they complain if the battery life is too short. Unfortunately, since it is nigh-impossible to improve all three of these factors at once without fundamentally improving battery technology [1] -- a glacially slow process compared to Moore's Law -- to build a portable device is to sign up for a torrent of customer complaints. I'm sure that various aspects of the Air's performance have been deliberately throttled to ensure that its cute little credit-card-thin battery doesn't crap out after half an hour. One thing to try is simply plugging it in. There's no mention here of whether that made a difference. And Parallels? Geez. How many computers worth of computer does this guy expect to fit in a manila envelope? [1] You would think that each generation of improved processor designs would improve performance. And it does. But every time processors speed up, our desktop-wielding developers dream up an incredibly fun, more-processor-intensive thing to do with all those new cycles, like render more polygons or playback multiple Flash videos or use IMAP or do real-time JOINs between your friends' friends' Facebooks, and these two factors roughly cancel out.