I'm Thinking About Purchasing a MacBook, and I Have Some Questions

The performance of your MacBook Air will depend on which processor speed you go with; so the screen size shouldn't matter. For documents and other related tasks, the air should be fine. I have an 11 inch MacBook Air that I use with Pages for documents and Numbers for spreadsheets. They seem very accessible, although my needs are fairly basic.

HTH

As I recall, the base model of each is a little different. The 13-inch starts with somewhat better specs and, as you said, includes an SD slot. It also has full-sized function and arrow keys, whereas the 11-inch has half-sized keys for those. Most of the keyboard is identical, it's just the very top row and arrows that are smaller on the 11-inch.

As was stated, though, you can get the same specs in either machine if you're willing to spend more. For your purposes, I highly recommend 8GB of ram, or VMWare may be slow and annoying to use.

If your needs are basic, have you looked into the 12-inch Retina MacBook? I only bring it up because it has better battery life, is the size of the 11-inch Air but is even thinner and lighter, and is finless. I don't know how VMWare would run on it, but your other tasks seem like they would be no problem. I know it has one port only and a new (some say bad) keyboard, but it may be worth considering. Just a thought.

I would advise against the MacBook retina, as its processor is less powerful than that of the air and the price is higher. For running windows, I tend to prefer boot camp, assuming your need for windows doesn't need to be simultaneous with using OSX. That allows windows to run independently with full specifications, and therefore reduces your need for faster and more expensive components. That said, if you intend to run a virtual machine for windows, you will want the higher processor speed and memory option. The 11-inch size should not matter, as the only major difference is the size of the function keys and arrows, but assuming you don't have a MacBook already, you would need to become accustomed to a new keyboard no matter what size you chose.
I can't speak for the accessibility of office products on OSX; I just use iWork, which is accessible. I believe others have experience with office on OSX, and you could also use it on windows if you set that up.

I personally have a macbook pro retina but the big difference between the air 11 inch and 13 inch now is the 13 inch comes with 8 gb ram by default! I personally thought the 11 inch air was a bit small, the keyboard on the pro and air 13 are very nice. The macbook is nice but one port just wasn't enough for my needs. Good luck with whatever decision you make.

Hello,
I just this past Saturday purchased a 13.3 Air and so far I am really liking it. I too am going to be putting Windows on my machine. There are some things that are just better done in Windows that I need. I am deciding on either doing Windows in a virtual machine or in boot camp. For this reason I bought the top of the line Air. Mine has a 2.2ghz quad cor I7, 8gigs of ram and a 512gig SSD. It was pricy but since I am going to be using Windows on it as well I spent the extra to get it. Let me tell you this thing flies and it is really thin. I can now see why people buy cases for these machines. Now back to figuring out how to use my new machine. Happy computing all.

Regards,
Greg Wocher

The Air itself is more durable than it first appears, so no extra hard-shell case is needed. For carrying it, I'd get either a sleeve or, my preference, a laptop bag with a dedicated, padded compartment designed for laptops. In that case (bad pun, sorry), no sleeve is needed either.