I am giving up on the MacBook Air.

It is just too slow at running multiple web apps + Skype or iTunes or whatever. There are two issues. First, it is generally a bit slow. Second, it frequently goes into a really annoying state where a "kernel_tas" process w/ PID 0 (the kernel) thrashes the CPU, taking up 120% CPU.

I have Googled this extensively, and many others report this problem on the Air. Some feel it is related to heat management, and what they experience is one CPU (or core?) shutting down, and that makes the machine really slow. They can see on Activity Monitor that one of the dual CPUs stops. That does not happen to me, but the machine is very slow anyway.

Things I have tried:
* Uninstalling HP printer drivers (they are sometimes blamed)
* Telling Spotlight not to index video files (this is sometimes blamed)
* Setting my CPU to run cooler with CoolBook
* It has nothing to do w/ an external monitor, which some people blame

Here is a discussion thread about this problem.

Often putting the computer to sleep and waking it up again fixes it, but not always.

Maybe I could fix this, but I've spent hours on this problem and failed. And the machine is too slow even when it isn't really slow because of this bug.

I guess I will sell this machine that is only 9 months old. I don't think I've ever sold a computer in that short a time period, usually they last me 2-4 years. Sigh. I love the form factor, don't mind the small screen, but it's just too slow and buggy.

I will probably get whatever the smallest/lightest MacBook or MacBook Pro is....looks like I want the 13" MacBook. It's even cheaper than the Air! Not sure if I want white/aluminum or 2.0Ghz / 2.4Ghz.

The screen size has not been much of a problem, but the low horsepower of the Macbook Air has been annoying. Web apps are, unfortunately, pretty high-horsepower, and having multiple Google apps windows open makes the Air pretty slow. It also responds poorly to high heat, like when it is on my lap, by slowing down even more.

I love the form factor and lightness, but...I may decide to switch to a small MacBook Pro. Since getting a TSI office and starting to travel a lot, my laptop has gone from 10-20% of my use to 80%+ of my use (since I use it at the office and when traveling). I'll be sad to give up the lightness, but with this now being my main machine, I think I need more speed.