Mac book air vs viao s series

[bbzoe]

Hey guys,
I'm getting a laptop for my wife for med school. We believe portability and size are very important so we have basically narrowed it down to two 13.3" computers.

The mac book air 1440x900 resolution

http://store.apple.com/us_edu_145599/cart
2.13GHz intel core 2 duo
4gb ddr3 ram (max)
256GB flash storage (guessing that means standard SSD)

-She likes the look of the air but i'm not sure if the cpu is worth the price compared to the the sony's. Also the air is 2.9 pounds and extremely portable!

Sony s series

Silver - She doesn't mind the silver and the screen resolution is 1600x900 and $50 dollars cheaper. $2199
i7-2620m 2.7GHz
4gb ddr3 ram (expandable up to 8 would do later off newegg for much cheaper)
256GB SSD (two 128's in raid 0)
blu ray player built in

White - She likes the white color more but the resolution is 1366x768. $2249
same specs just the screen resolution.

I was wondering what your opinion was between the two. She really likes the mac book, but understands that the sony might be faster, but its bigger @ 3.8 lbs. If you know anything about screen resolution I would love your input on any difference between the white and silver sony's. Also we love the built in mouse on the mac. I have the sony's upgraded out the butt, but I'm not sure if that will lead to a noticeable difference between the two. Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[Maziar]

It isn't fair to compare the MBA with the new Sony S series since the MBA uses the old Core 2 CPUs whereas the latter have much faster CPUs.
Overall MBA offers
1)OS X
2)Much better touch pad with more gestures compared to any windows laptop
3)Unibody aluminum
On the other hand,as I said you get a much faster CPU and more screen state along with bluray and RAM biodegradability

 

[bbzoe]

Will there be a significant noticeable difference between the speeds on the mac and the s series though? mainly for surfing web maybe powering through massive documents (pdf's maybe) for studying (not to sure what size stuff they will work on). She doesn't want me using it for games and stuff so that wont matter .

 

[Maziar]

No,in daily tasks you won't see much of a difference

 

[Viper6]

Just keep in mind compatibility of the mac book for med school as there may be programs that may not be able to run so easily on mac.
for example I had to do something on excel for university which meant I had to use a plugin for excel, the people in my class using macs could not access this plugin using the apple edition of excel.
other than that theres nothing wrong with either. (apart from the ram thing)