Mid-2012 MBA Battery Life + High RAM Usage

Question

I recently purchased the lastest mid-2012 base model MBA brand new, factory sealed from eBay and started using it a few days ago. Overall its a great machine, however there were two things that were slightly bothering me;
1) Although the battery life is decent (around 5.5- 6 hours), on the system report page (see pic 1) , it said it only had 6128 mAh of charge remaining at 99%, even though the full battery capacity was 6527 mAh. Does this mean the battery capacity has already decreased after just 3 cyles or is this normal with lithium ion batteries? However, I don't know if this matters, but the place where I'm from suffers from frequent power cuts so I had charged the computer on a sine wave inverter a couple of times (AC current line). Could this have affected it in anyway?
2) The computer had shipped with OS X 10.8 and I upgraded to 10.8.2 the same day I started using it. While the computer doesn't feel sluggish at all (well, tbh I haven't run any heavy programs yet), even with very few of apps open, the RAM usage is very high (see pic 2)- It says I am using 2.92 GB of RAM, and have just 1.07 GB of free RAM. Is this a common problem in with ML? I was planning to install VMWare and CS6 but now I'm not too sure judging by the amount of free RAM I have atm. What should I do about it?
Pic 1
Pic 2
Would highly appreciate if any of you guys could help me out here. Thanks in advance !

Answer 1

I'm at 1.02 GB of wired RAM on a completely "naked" boot of OS X. I've got zero 3rd party apps installed or set to launch it's all core services of the OS only. Oddly enough, my 13" rMBP is at 1.18 GB off the same basic boot on 10.8.2 so it'll vary a little.
I also find that with Mt. Lion the reporting is on "tape delay" as I jokingly call it. For example when I start up an application it'll use "x" RAM and then after 5-10 minutes of just idling it'll then level out at "y" RAM. Where you have to be watchful is on 3rd party applications that will sometimes just start consuming RAM like that's it sole purpose.
On a side note, I've been fooling around with a free application on the App Store called "Memory Clean" that's suppose to take previously allocated RAM and free it up. So far so good, it's especially handy after I run a handbrake job or play some World of Warcraft where a significant amount of RAM is used. Definitely not a required application, OS X by default is quite good at freeing up and reallocating RAM but sometimes it doesn't always get the job done if you need it right now (for a VM).
In your full charge capacity photo the machine is running on battery power, although at 99%. On my MBA I get almost 280 mAh of usage between 100% and 99% that right there would close the gap considerably.
On the subject of 3rd party applications, Coconut Battery (a free 3rd party application) has a handy tool that allows you to create data points on battery health. Might be worth exploring so you have a statistical representation of the battery's health if you're interested.