MBA 'first thoughts' review up on NBR

Well, for now, I'll wait for more reviews to come in to make my judgement as to battery life.

 

Ars review of the ssd model.

 

It seems there isn't much difference between the ssd and hdd models, aside from not being that many slowdowns on the ssd when there is lots of disk activity like on the hdd model, there were only modest gains in battery life, apparently the guy only got 2 hours and 52 minutes, but a portion of the time he didn't have wifi on because he was having troubles with his isp, then he ran it again with wifi on and got 2 hours and 11 minutes, wtf... so in average the ssd model has about the same battery life than the hdd model.

All i can say is... what a disappointment. I'm seriously hoping this guy got a defective battery cause that's not justifiable to have an ultraportable with a sealed battery and less than 3 hours of battery life when you advertise 5. Not common of apple really, since their ipod estimates are always conservative, except maybe the ipod touch.

It seems that the only advantage you get out of ssd is the added ruggedness. For $1300. bleh. Hopefully this is just a battery problem, if not, I will wait for mba v.2

 

NBR's review. (hdd model)

Color me confused.

 

They claim the technology is cutting edge, next gen stuff.

It's slower then previous PowerPC generations of Macs....

Not cutting edge if you ask me.

 

And didn't apple have on their website that you can get 5 hours "productivity" while surfing the web "depending" on configuration.

I would have been more impressed with the MBA if it got 5 hours with full brightness and wifi on.

From the ARS review though, I'm surprised (well, not really) that the SSD drive performed so bad compared the the MB and MBP.

 

I've actually been to the Apple store twice looking at the MBA. The ones they had on display were SSD models. I did not ask them to boot them for me.

Now that I've read the ars ssd review, I will ask.

Why would Apple let a unit with questionable battery life out to a reviewer? Don't they test these things before sending them to places like ars, notebookreview.com and so forth? So the batch of bad batteries theory isn't holding much water with me right now.

As much as I like mac, I remember I got "burned" when I purchased the original Mac Mini (G4-1.25 Ghz). On Apple's info page, it's listed as having 512 meg. No it does not. This means a machine I own which is still covered by AppleCare cannot run the current OS and Apple is refusing to install new ram for me.

I'm forced to go find my own putty knife. This chain of events, taken with these lukewarm reviews of both the MBA and MBA-SSD does not bode well for me to be on the bleeding edge of this particular technology no matter how beautiful I may think the machine is.

I'm ready for a new notebook and as much as I like thin and light, I'm thinking it will be a regular Macbook.

 

Both Ars units were defective batteries? Ewww.

 

I'm still looking for a conceptual person who would be better served by this laptop than a Macbook. Perhaps it's for people who are buying a secondary laptop, and already have a primary one to serve their portable needs...

I'm a bit confused as to why Apple designed the MBA specifically. It seems like it would make more sense to make a 12" or something that's powerful, than to make something in the same form factor as the Macbook with less power, fewer features, and lower battery life (not to mention you can't carry multiple batteries and swap them).

The most interesting (generous?) explanation I've heard is that the MBA was a necessary incremental step to develop portable technologies. It's a product to enable the smaller processor to be created, that sort of thing. Sound plausible to you guys?

 

I'm having problems with Ars Technica's review. First of all, based on our collective experience with the TZ, of which I own two, we all know that SSDs consistenly outperform their hard disk brethren, particularly of the 4200rpm variety, which EVERYBODY on this forum know is ploddingly SLOW.

Second, I'm getting north of 3.5 hours on my MacBook Air SSD, so I don't know where their stats got skewed, and that's with BT on and Wi-Fi off at the lowest possible screen setting.

I would wait for other reviews before putting too much credence in this story. Could be an MBA hater at AT.

 

The review touches on something that potentially affects the MBP refresh, whenever that happens. It's the enlarged new trackpad with gestures.

I thought my MBP trackpad is large enough, already larger than almost all other notebooks out there. And while I don't accidentally tap or touch it while typing, I get pretty close to it.

This new larger trackpad concerns me a little, but puts me somewhat at ease that I didn't wait for the MBP refresh, since most experts think that the new MBP will most likely feature this new trackpad.

 

How much RAM does the system say you have? If it's in the high 400's then that is because the integrated card is borrowing RAM to use as VRAM.

 

Haha. I actually had to force myself to get used to it's size. I remember at first playing CoD4 and having my aim go all twitchy on me because my left palm was touching the edge of the pad.

 

Haha, yeah, I think the trackpad is getting too big with the MBA...the current Mac notebook trackpads are already a little generous, I think any bigger and it'll be kind of annoying.

 

Not annoying at all. Just increase your trackspeed to maximum and it's just like any trackpad.

 

TUAW's review.

bollocks...

 

Sounds like ARS was close to right.

Apple insider is a bunch of fanboys? (duh)

 

Anandtech's done a few tests with the MBA in terms of battery life: http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3220

 

lol, i didnt know what rdf was until I read that article. drinking the koolaid...lol...

 

Those are really good tests that show how wildly the battery life can swing. The MBA has such a small battery that it doesn't take much to make a huge impact. What you can also see is that Apple did a pretty good job of minimize any extraneous power usage when idle or close to idle. In my usual piddline around I get a little over 4 hours of use with the screen dimmed just below 50%. That is with BT off and WiFi on. I'm not complaining.