Hold on - are you sure we're talking about the first gen Air - that device was more like a concept prototype than anything people actually bought/used. It came with a slow spinning disk by default, and the SSD was hellishly expensive. It was also pretty slow, particularly if you didn't upgrade to SSD. I know some people who did purchase latter generations once the SSDs were within reach.

I did buy and use it. I know other people who bought and used it. Of course the subsequent iterations were better, but the first gen was not unusable.

I used it too. Skype and Youtube was unusable unless it was cold that day.

Overheating was indeed an issue, but I think it didn't affect all the units to the same extent. It was a problem for me, and increasingly so if I remember correctly with later macosx releases, but another machine bought at the same time worked much better.

Expensive!? Only $2.8k with a 64gb SSD, and a processor slower than the regular Macbook :) Could get an extra .2 ghz for $300, too!