This is my setup, the 11" MacBook Air:
I am pretty happy with it. Xcode is making the fans roar. Latest Illustrator and InDesign work pretty well though. I do not use Photoshop. Occasional beachball for a few seconds, but other than that, it is OK.
My most used apps are Glyphs, Safari, TextMate, and an older version of Tower.
Nice, thanks for sharing the details and your experience. It’s good to hear it’s worked out pretty well for you and those apps.
I used to do more traditional graphic design work with more intense image editing, but now those apps are primarily for designing my marketing posters for the fonts. So it seems the Air at 8 GB RAM may be sufficient. (Still have the iMac working if needed.)
One thing to add: I did have the battery replaced at one point. (Was not very expensive.) Otherwise the hardware is still in its original state.
Ah ok… was it within the Apple Care warranty period (3 years) or were you able to go longer than that?
Long past. 
looks awesome, how much did it cost?
Nice
Keyboard about $90 (they range between $40–$100 on eBay), and USB costs $49 (http://www.bigmessowires.com/usb-wombat/)
That keyboard looks great but the arrow keys would kill me. The arrow keys have the same problem (maybe even worse) than the Butterfly ones 
You should go for the full-size AEK II than
I’m all in for the compact external keyboard with USB. It has the same layout than the MacBook keyboards (except the dreaded arrow keys). So muscle memory can do its thing (and it has a usb port for the mouse).
I’ll check eBay once in a while and buy one if I see a good deal to have one or two spare ones. They go for 30–45 €. I checked all other brands and couldn’t find one that I like in terms of key layout and looks.
Why not make of a custom ‘Glyphs Keyboard’? 
like the Kyria:
Nice, thanks for the tips to this Georg! Sounds like a lot of pluses to this now.
To be honest, I’m not great at understanding differences in processor power. Here is what I’m using with the current base model Air:
How does it compare to the new ones (base model on left)?:
Is the new base model processor power better right away than the one I just got and am using?
Thanks.
Newer is usually better in terms of computers. But from one generation to the next, you will not notice much of a difference in speed. But the big difference in this case will be the better keyboard.
Thanks Rainer.
The processor has a much lower nominal clock speed (probably to save power) but still is quite a bit faster. And it has a higher Turbo Boost (it can do even more than the advertised 3.5 GHz). That means that the few times the processor is actually doing stuff, it is ramped up a lot. It can’t do that for long but then most task are done anyway.
