With Mountain Lion the air is much more iPad-like and is likely to become more so with future app and OS upgrades. My air replacement will be another maxed 11" air since I just can't see anything with a much bigger footprint working for me.
I think the air is a great choice. I have had mine for over two years with no issues. Never had another computer of any kind that I could say that about. It just works.
Yeah, refurbished is your best bet. I had lots of problems with my previous Belkin and Linksys (Cisco) routers but have had only minimal problems with my Airport Extreme since then, almost all of which has been my fault.
The air should be perfectly capable of running parallels. Now whether you want Windows to reside on the same disk as OSx, is another question. Windows has its very own disk on my Mac Pro, and I like it that way.
Congrat on the bike Vicki. That is a real looker.
Thanks for everyone's opinion on biking shoes. You absolutely convinced me that I had to try them on since there is a lot of variation in fit. Well after trying on what seems like thousands of pairs I finally bought a pair of Bontrager Race DLX. They were absolutely the most comfortable for me and they were actually one of the least expensive shoes I tried on.
Actually your laptop will fit in the center compartment of the Air Boss. I just measured. You probably want some padding on the bottom or use a sleeve around it. It will still fit.
I believe the goal with that set of measurements is to give independence from seat tube and top tube angles. But I could easily be wrong.
Edit: Actually, independence is the wrong word. Those measurements integrate the angles into the fit measurement.
I would get a mid 2010 Mac Mini or newer. I have that one with 8gb of ram and it runs mountain lion well. Never had any glitches playing music without any of the silly things like disabling wifi and Bluetooth.
AirPlay is for using the ipad to mirror or extend the monitor on your mini. The main reason I use Amarra is that it makes playing different resolution files seamless and I like their DSP options. When I bought Amarra mini it was the cheapest option. If I was buying it new today I would probably just buy the Amarra HiFi.