Rev.C Air - all quiet on the defect front?

I'm going to have in my possession a small number of Hypermac external batteries (060 and 100) soon and I'm quite keen to see if the Rev.C Air is workable with it.

The external'd Air would seem to give me 9 ekeing hours with the 060 with an all-up weight of 1.7Kg's, which is a significant saving on the boat anchor that I currently need to carry always (Crapbook with two spare batteries - 2.6Kg's - to achieve the 9 hours real-life ekeing runtime I need in many situations). I'm going to look at a replacement for the Crapbooks to 13-inch MBP's later when the SATA issues are sorted out so that I can reduce the all-up weight there as well, but I definitely want options in how much OS X weight I lug around.

It seems that I'm not reading much in the way of moans for the Rev.C and I have opposing blocks / incentives to purchase now:

block: famous Apple 'new model issues'. Nuff said.

incentive: it's summer now, so the Air will get a workout during my normal working environments. The inadequacies of the Rev.A came to light most during summer in the different places I work, where the ambient will be ~30C in some cases - and I figure now is a good time to buy to see if the Rev.C is a less problematic thermal stability proposition.

Any new problems coming up with the Rev. C I should know about?

 

sorry to semi-jack your post, but why was it that you hate apple laptops so much and yet buy all of the versions of them and keep them updated as well?

i asked you before but since the search was taken down, its buried.

also, i haven't heard of any serious macbook air issues with the most current revisions... safe AFAIK

 

you bought 3 and think they are crapbooks?

 

people name their pets, their cars, their computers

what's wrong with it anyways?

 

The bigger question is: why does he have 9 laptops?

 

masterchef341:
The answer is the need to run OS X. There is absolutely no other reason or merit at this point in time for having Apple hardware in my possession.

The reason I keep refreshing them is that
a) while new problems tend to be introduced, subsequent models do for the most part solve some area of significant inadequacy of older machines
and
b) I can.

owais:
Yes. And slightly more than 3.

Detail:
You're assuming I have only one each. It may not be the case.

Questions answered, I believe - I now return you to the thread.

 

what is it about OSX that merits purchasing 3+ machines for it (among a sea of others)?

 

if Vogel is like myself he has units to support other Mac users/companies and possibly even support, run or design custom OS X apps in one industry or another.

And hey whats wrong with having a house full of laptops?

Vogel, I havnt had too many moans on the rev C, just the usual bootcamp driver issues, crappy screens, and they HATE high vibration environments like vehicle mounts like the rest of the UB's Ive dealt with.

On the 13" the SATA 2 issue is more or less dealt with but still doesnt give as much througput on random read/writes as some of my other units but I can deal with an 8-12% hit over a 45% hit on my OCZ SSD's. Damn do they eat batteries if you start to push them. As for 30C ambient, they are a lil warm on normal use and can cook eggs when trying to max them out

 

what about getting Lenovo and hackitoching it?So you can stop annoying us all?

 

There is still the lines issue.

 

Thanks. However, it's moot as I have it - and it as in just the one as I'm going to be giving this a thorough workout before I commit to racking up any more losses to Apple - already. Will be trying it with the external battery packs to see if this is workable. If not - well, I guess it's either stick with what I have or contemplate a somewhat kinkless 13" MBP a few months down the line.

A house full of laptops is a bad thing. I'm trying to decontent my home setup (like I've tried many times - but I generally end up with 4+ floating around), but at my offices it's a different matter. I like having the pick of a specific type of machine wherever I mainly work from, but I don't like having to carry all of them from place to place to have that flexibility - so I triplicate my work laptops, and have another partial set at home.

RE: the SATA2 issue - apparently not. As I said elsewhere, I'll wait to see the exact fallout from that.

 

I have not done that personally,since I am totally satisfied with what I have,however lots of tech blogs say that they fully work...

If that is not an option,please do me a favor-

It is your right not to like apple and their products,but please express that in a way not to make anyone angry?not that difficult IMO...

 

@Vogelbung:

The grey lines issue is still there. It's not a graphics card problem, it's a coating issue on the manufacturing side.

@everyone else:

He says crapbook. Big whoop. He's critical of what he sees, and I would rather that he share his experience rather than politely shuffle off.

 

Seeing as my primary actually-portable OS X carry has been the UB MB since I dumped the previous Airs, after a few months of squinting at the Glarebook while simultaneously making like a Bollywood dancer trying to move my head to find the best viewing angle to actually see something when in a brightly lit room / semi-outside, going back to the mediocre-in-absolutes-yet-near-top-of-the-line-for-Apple screen of the Air is actually quite a relief.

There's actually other display issues but I'm not hugely bothered by them for the time being. The display is the very least of my issues with the Air from previous experience, aside from more obvious defects - two out of three Airs being afflicted with panel defects (not dead pixels but debris / damage behind the pixels). Stability in real-life use and runtime are the primary issues I'm hoping to overcome, while running a lower all-up carry weight for a 9-hour ekeing real-life runtime target than a UBMB/UBMBP.

Currently I need to carry two batteries for the UBMB to achieve that (~11.5 hours) for a 2.6Kg all-up weight, versus 2.1Kg's for the older Sony SZ (~12 hours) and 1.8Kg's for the Z (~10 hours). In case of the Air, the addition of the external battery should squeak in with a total-9-hour runtime at a weight of 1.7Kg's. Somewhat laughable when compared to the relative merits of the Windows machines, but nevertheless gets the runtime I need at a much lower weight than my current OS X solution. The external battery also does away with a major problem with charging more than one battery. However, whether the external pack is too cumbersome / inconvenient is something I need to decide through use.

 

I, for one, welcome the witty humor of Vogelbung. It's a breath of fresh air after going through pages of Apple fanboyism.


And no, I'm not some sadistic Microsoft advocate bent on making Apple look bad; as you can see, I have my own fair share of Apple products.

 

i dont find vogelbung's humor witty. thats a serious stretch. critical opinions are always a good thing though, if they are genuine and informative.

its just weird hearing it from someone who has the full collection and keeps it up to date as well.

 

I am sorry,but how is calling macbooks-crapbooks a humor? Not a single positive post here!

And what do you mean fanboyism-this is apple forum,so quite natural that people here own and appreciate their notebooks....

 

I haven't read of any issues.
On a positive note i have read a few people comment that battery life is slightly better on this rev C model. Now i can't understand why that would be because the battery capacity is still at the same 40w.

Also, this is interesting some tests have shown that the old 1.86 MBA is in fact faster than the high end 2.13 version. This is very odd seeing as the 2.13 processor has 6MB cache of ram and uses the same 1066mhz bus. It doesn't make any sense but it may be something to consider if you've owned the older model and are thinking about upgrading to the high end model.

http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/06/26/old.mba.beats.new.mba/
http://www.macworld.com/article/141296/2009/06/macbook_air_mid09.html

 

Better battery life + poorer performance could = more throttling. And perhaps, a bug in the power management which throttles even when plugged in - we are talking about Apple, and a new line / refresh after all. Unless I'm not reading the right bits the test makes no mention of what power profile it was run on and whether it was plugged in. As you know this type of machine isn't for running FCS but for general productivity, and I for one would welcome more throttling on the battery power saving modes if this meaningfully extends battery life.

Since my runtime tests have been very consistent in (if much shorter in actual runtimes) from model to model with Apple's quoted runtimes, I've estimated - and for the above reason, probably accurately - that with the smaller of the two battery pack I've ordered (making up the 1.7Kgs all-up weight), I would get almost exactly 9 hours out of a Rev.B. That is cutting it a bit fine for me, so any extension of the host Air's runtime would be a good reserve to have.

Still waiting for the smaller external pack and not heading out to warmer climes for a few weeks, so will not bother doing any runtime / stability tests of my own until then. Perhaps the claims of increased runtime could be coming from people with inconsistent power settings as well as the above.

Xiurg, it goes way beyond appreciate in many cases - and only with Apple. It's this strangely defensive, partially informed, holier-than-thou and while you could call it appreciate, I call it low-level fundamentalism. It doesn't matter whether you own other manufacturers: It's a facet of the owner and how susceptible they are to Apple's peculiarly accomplished-in-the-field marketing as a whole.

As for me, as a competent user I expect my stuff to genuinely 'just work' in a way that according to some apparently lesser gear has been doing for me for many years - especially when the platform requires a dedicated resource commitment to it. My financial commitment to Apple doesn't end at a few MBP's.

 

ORLY?way beyond appreciated?

You are just applying old stereotypes. No one here goes-"OMG,MY MAC IS 100x BETTER THEN ANY PC AND ALL PC USERS SUCK". And even if you see everything in other way,it does not give you a right to make posts like that.here people,including you, come to discuss certain problems and find solutions for them.All I ask is to refrain from "aggressive" posts... there are wonderful sites where you can go and discuss how awful,cash-making marketing machine apple is.

 

Xiurg, some people's response to exasperatedly candid opinions of something that they "appreciate" will never change.

And some people's propensity to post exasperatedly candid opinions will change only if the manufacturer actually delivers even a limited percentage of what it's most rabid fanbois claims it does.

Based on a sample set beyond the dreams of the vast majority of those aforementioned fanbois, in terms of product uptime and stability across the board, as well as practicality in use, I rate Apple significantly lower than any other manufacturer I use on a regular basis. I would definitely like to see it change as it's my money that I'm spending. So far, no luck.

I suggest we leave it at that.

 

Well, I dunno, but I always get a laugh or two from his posts.

 

Guys, I've seen several of you referring to installing OS X on PC hardware. According to the law this is an illegal activity. Any discussion on it is not allowed on this forum. Do it one more time and you will get an infraction.

In my opinion Vogelbung is allowed to give his opinion on Apple. But I think calling them 'crapbooks' consistently is unnecessary and offensive to some people. So I'd rather see him stop doing that. Other than that I value his opinion as he obviously has a lot of experience with laptops and his posts sometimes make me laugh.

I've asked other moderators what they think of the use of the word 'crapbooks'.

 

Well,technically,not discussing,suggesting Anyway,I apologize if I broke any rules...

Who said he is not?He is more then welcome to share his opinion and criticize apple...heck,if anyone blindly loved apple,even that stupid SATA bug would not be fixed,people would just stop using SSD. However,applying stereotypes that every apple owner who likes his notebooks is fanboy and constant "negative" does not help anyone... no one goes to MS forum and call it miscrosucks or to AW and call them overpriced something -is it to much to ask for civilized conversation?

 

This is the way I think it is:
Constantly negative opinions = allowed.
Possibly offensive words like 'crapbook, microsucks' = not allowed.

Let's not discuss this here any further, because we're off topic.

If you do want to discuss this open a thread in an appropriate forum.

 

QFT.And no,I think there no need to open another thread,I hope we understood each other

Vogelbung,just for you, I took a look at couple of apple forums including MR and AI and looks like the speed problem Rachel mentioned is the only "issue". I also read whole discussion thread on MR,which mostly was BS,but some said that xBench is inaccurate and in real life you might get different results.

EDIT: this thread might be helpful.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=726811