So after Thursday's swollen battery feature adventure. I went back last night and came home with this....
Mid Summer 2014 MacBook Air
1.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz)
8GB RAM/256GB PCIe-based flash storage
Used my paltry student discount and they gave me AppleCare for $83.
For a bit more, I could have purchased the MBP w/Retina. But I have two weeks to decide if this MBA is right for me. I like that it's lighter and has a longer battery life than the MBP/r. If I need a DVD drive, I can just use the share feature and use the iMac. I'm not going to do any real heavy photo/video work with it so not having the retina display isn't that much of an issue for me.
I still have my five year old Macbook (Aluminum) which I'm just done fucking around trying to get 10.7, 10.8 and Mavericks to work and stay stable. Could be the Office for Mac 2011 and its installer that's causing the issue. Perhaps so but I haven't really looked into it. I have 10.8.5 on it now with no Office since Thursday night and it seems to be okay. I also think it's Chrome that's causing an issue as well.
Fucking computers. It's shit like this is why I left the computer industry back in 1998. Sure, the technology has changed, but they still cause the same fucking headaches.