While the 2012 Air's improvements are impressive, perhaps the most-welcome change is that all of these upgrades come--with the exception of the entry-level 11-inch model--at lower prices. That entry-level 11-inch Air sports a 1.7GHz i5 processor with 3MB of shared L3 cache, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of flash storage for $999. But this year, the next model up is only $1099 and gets you 128GB of storage--well worth the extra $100, in my opinion.

The entry-level 13-inch Air, which features a 1.8GHz i5 processor with 3MB of shared L3 cache, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of flash storage, has dropped in price to $1199, and the other 13-inch Air, which offers 256GB of flash storage, is $1499, both also $100 drops compared to last year.

All four Air models can be upgraded to 8GB of RAM for an additional $100. That a reasonable price, but it's also a easy recommendation if your computing needs go at all beyond the basics or if you plan to keep your Air for a while--as mentioned above, you upgrade later.

The $1099 11-inch and $1499 13-inch models offer a couple other benefits: Only they can be upgraded, for $100 at the time of purchase, to the 2.0GHz Intel Core i7. The $1099 11-inch model can also be upgraded to 256GB (for $300) or 512GB (for $800) of storage, and the $1499 Air can be upgraded to 512GB for $500.