The air is not and has never been a desktop replacement machine. I have an original model and it is a great laptop if you are on the go and money is not an option. My biggest complaint with the original Air is that battery life is abysmal. It sounds like they have focused most on improving that. The other problem with the original Air was the price. Now, you may complain about the price of the new version, but the fact is they have brought it down quite a bit.

Machines like this don't need the latest and greatest CPU. There were very few things that I do on my original air that tax its CPU. That's because I'm not editing video, etc on it. You basically have grown-up machine that you can do actual work on and it's not much bigger than an iPad.

Do I see a need to have both an ipad and an air? Probably not. If you have an ipad already, then chances are you would be better served with a larger laptop.

As far as the ethernet port. On a machine like this, it's not that important. I have a USB ethernet dongle and I've used it 2-3 times.