No worries vetrade! What else were you looking at in comparison?
Reliability: 9 hours is definitely pushing it a bit too far, 5 hours is more a realistic estimate with moderate use going though it (I'm sure if you kept the backlight off and stared at your desktop for 9 hours there's a chance you'd reach it, but don't think and desktop wallpaper can really keep someone's attention for that long!). I should note though that I've also enabled a setting keeping it to a max charge of 80% battery, which I was told is better for the battery, so I wouldn't be surprised if it pushed into the 6-7 hours range, but I haven't tried it given I'm not often that far away from a power source. I've been mostly using it for word documents, internet browsing and movie playback, and it hasn't given me any real troubles so far. Can't speak for its performance though if you're looking at performing high intensity tasks such as movie editing, photoshopping etc.
Build Quality: Without a doubt Samsung's "borrowed" elements from the Macbook Air design, but that doesn't take away from its looks. Have had many people go out of their way to comment on it, which has been nice to hear. Whilst I've been quite careful with it, I've found it hasn't been picking up scratches, something which always is often bound to happen as soon as you buy a shiny new toy. It also doesn't seem to get any warmer than other laptops would underneath when using it on the couch or the like. Its weight has been a dream especially when having it in a backpack all day, though you'd expect that from any ultrabook I guess. The lid seems sturdy, has a nice smooth feel when opening it up and overall the laptop has a premium feel to it.
Negatives: I think for its shortcomings they're really down to personal taste. Most of the laptops are essentially the same but with a different brand on the front, so look and feel play a decent role. I'd have loved an extra USB point but I know that's a sacrifice I made when going for the 13" model, and there's the occasional lag when I'm using a number of tabs at once in Chrome (though I've only really noticed it since upgrading from Win7 to Win8 - whether its got something to do with being an early build of Win8 I'm not sure, though I don't find it to really cause much trouble for me).
At the end of the day though it gets the job done, and after cashing in on a price protection claim with my 28 Degrees card I picked it up for <$1,100 which I thought was pretty good value.
