We think this is absolutely awesome, and a couple of MacBook Air generations overdue.

Compensating for the lack of an optical drive, the box includes a USB software reinstall drive. The drive is 8 GB total, and contains both Snow Leopard and iLife '11.

The drive is bootable by holding down the "C" key on startup, just like a normal DVD restore disc.

The USB drive appears to be read-only, but we haven't tried any serious hacking to prove otherwise.