“By now you’ve heard that under ‘normal’ usage, the Air can only manage about 2.5 hours of battery life. That’s true and at the same time it isn’t. I touch on part of this in the review, but the MacBook Air isn’t designed to be your work notebook – no ultra portable is. It’s a notebook for a writer, for someone taking notes in class; it’s a second notebook, or a third system. As such, the typical usage model can be very different than your standard notebook,” Anand Lal Shimpi reports for AnandTech.
“At the same time, most of the people considering the Air aren’t looking at it as a second notebook or a third system, they are looking at it as their primary notebook (and will be left sorely disappointed or frustrated after a while). The end result is that you need a handful of battery life tests to really cover all bases. And that’s what I’ve done,” Lal Shimpi reports.
Lal Shimpi’s tests revealed:
• 4.27 hours for wireless Internet browsing and MP3 playback
• 3.42 hours for DVD playback
• 2.43 hours for Xvid playback, Web browsing, and heavy downloading
More in the full article here.
They really assaulted the battery.
A DVD playback test? It has no built-in optical drive. Not a very reasonable test for this Mac.
A complete battery of tests seems to have been done.
That’s more battery life than I have ever had from my 15 inch G4 Powerbook. Sounds good to me.
Take it with a pinch of salt.
A – ssault & battery
“A complete battery of tests . . . “
I wouldn’t be anode at how thorough they were. If their tests were deliberately weak, then they would be guilty as charged.
They’re more concerned than ion this issue. I think the results are both positive and negative…
The report has sparked some interesting discussion here.
Some interesting power points.
grok: Comments like that last one tend to polarize people.
Is this a current report?
It makes one wonder if these concerns are grounded.
A very powerful analysis – lots of plusses and minuses here. Absolutely electric.
Weak. Very weak.
Why do you all have to be so caustic?
MP – Maybe you’re right. I think we’ve about completed the circuit on this story anyway.
Wow, and I thought I worked with a bunch of dorks every time I went on Conan . . .
“The report has sparked some interesting discussion here.”
Reports like these tend to galvanize people into an open discussion rather than zinc them into a revolting, circuitous cycle. And some just like to be lead along.
“Why do you all have to be so caustic?”
Just a little wired, maybe.
This has to be terminated! Even if we have to take it all the way to DC.
Wow the MBA is really showing it’s flaws. Now you have to use it reasonably to get more than 2.5 hours of ultra slow computing. Next they are going to tell us that it only works in certain time zones and has to be held at certain angles, the moon phase has to be right….
What a practical machine. Again MBA 2.0 will be a much better machine. The economic crunch is coming, nobody should spend their money on half-baked beta phase products. I am sure Apple released this one for legal reasons. As in..if they did not release a laptop computer with multi-touch they could not extend the iPhone patents to protect that product.
Just my $0.02
I could meet you at the DC terminal. It’s not far from my ohm.
Off subject, but
Joe Scott and Jane Skinner on FOX NEWS, have replaced their MBP’s with new MacBook Black ones
The white Apple really stands out against the black plastic!
Ampar wins…not only for the usual punishment he doles out, but for his name.
I really didn’t want to get involved in this conversation, but resistance is futile.